Model answer for an IELTS bar chart on USA household income.
Here is a tricky IELTS academic task that I wrote a model answer for from the Cambridge IELTS 18 book. As I mentioned in posts before, always use authentic material such as IELTS Cambridge books or British Council material when practicing because there is a lot of fake IELTS stuff on the internet.
This task was quite difficult to write about as I had to spend longer than usual analysing the bar chart and I needed to plan the report to make it as concise as possible.
Notice that it is dynamic data that changes every 4 years. As well as trends language, you need to make comparisons here.
The Task
Source: Cambridge IELTS 18 book test 2.
Model Answer
The chart illustrates the number of US households grouped by their yearly revenue from 2007 to 2015. Overall, annual income increased throughout the timeframe particularly for the wealthiest income bracket, whereas the middle and higher income categories witnessed negligible changes.
In 2007, almost 30 million households earned $100,000 or more, which was double that of the $75,000 – $99,999 bracket (just under 15 million). Following this, the less than $25,000 and $25,000 – $49,999 categories accounted for 25 million and around 26 million households respectively. Moreover, around 21 million had earnings of $50,000 to $74,999.
By 2011, there was a decline in the wealthiest bracket, comprising approximately 27 million households. The less than $25,000 and $25,000 -$49,999 groups both witnessed a rise to just under 30 million. The middle-income bracket saw no changes and the $75,000 -$99,999 category dipped slightly.
The wealthiest households rose considerably to 33 million by 2015, while the two lowest earning categories declined to around 26 million. There was a moderate rise for the second-highest earning households, and the $50,000 to $74,999 group showed no noticeable changes.
179 words
Analysis
The word count here is 179 words. At first, I was over 195 words and felt it was getting convoluted, so I had to erase parts and make it as concise as possible while still reporting on the key features.
The structure here is a little different as I combined the introduction and overview and there are 3 separate paragraphs for each timeframe.
I have used synonyms for the word ‘income‘ such as ‘revenue‘ and ‘earnings‘ and for the highest earning category I used the word ‘wealthiest‘ . In the $50,000+ category, I use the phrase ‘middle-income bracket’
I repeated the words ‘household‘ about 6 times, this is fine as I couldn’t think of a synonym so I didn’t want to waste time obsessing over repeating a word. I also used ‘bracket‘ a few times and wrote ‘category‘ or ‘group‘ to vary the language.
You can repeat words but try to vary your language as much as possible.
Any questions? Leave a comment below.
The chart provides information about the number of US households, based on their yearly incomes in the years 2007, 2011, and 2015. Units are measured in millions.
Overall, every quantity of annual income, experienced a downward trend, except
$50,000 – 74,999 throughout the period. Every number of annual income had some fluctuations. Although $50,000 – $74,999 remained steady while every yearly income initially had a lower rate, it rose at the end of the period.
In 2007, whose yearly income of less than $25,000 was around 25 million, it rose to almost 30 million in 2011, then decreased to approximately 27 million in 2015. Similarly, whose annual income $25,000- $49,999 was around 27 million in 2007, it rose in 2011 by almost 30 million households, and then in 2015 this rate slightly increased by around 28 million. Whose annual income $50,000 – 74,999 remained steady in the years 2007,2011 and 2015.
Groups of families whose annual profit $75,000-99,999 was about 14 million in 2007, slightly decreased in 2011 to 13 million, then finally reached 15 million in 2015. The number of families whose annual revenue $100,000 or more was almost 30 million in 2007, decreased approximately to 27 million in 2011 and hit a high-point of about 33 million in 2015.
The provided bar chart illustrates how many households by their yearly earning in the US over a period of 8 years, starting from 2007.
Overall, less than $25000 annual income of households and $25000 to $49999 yearly income of households saw a downward trend, whereas there was an upward trend in households income from $ 75000 to $99999 or more than $100000. Interestingly, fifty thousand to seventy thousand annual income of households was the same level throughout the period.
The bar chart gives information about how many households the US residents owned compared to their annual income in 2007, 2011 and 2015. The amount of income is shown in the US dollar.
Overall, from the five categories of annual income, residents who earned more than $1,00,000 had the highest number of households in 2007 and 2015. People earning 25,000 to 49,000 and below 25,000 were in second and third positions being close to each other respectively. 50,000 to 74,999 earning category people remained fourth and those who earned below than 1,00,000 had the lowest number of households.
To begin, people earning 75,000 to 99,999 had approximately 15 million households over the timeline while remaining stable at about 21 million households, category 50,000 to 74,999 was not different in the three respective years of 2007, 2011 and 2015.
There is a fluctuation in terms of both 25,000 to 49,999 and below 25000 in the time frame. Both showed an upward trend in 2011 before decreasing in 2015. However, an opposite view was seen in the case of $1,00,000 plus-earning people. They purchased nearly 33 million households in 2015 and that of just under 30 million at the beginning while there was a slight decrease in 2011.
The overview is too long and you should not include statistics in the overview. The overview needs to be concise so just summarise the main trends.
Informational blog. Thanks for sharing. This is very helpful for me in bar graph question answers.
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