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This is one of those classic comparison questions that can be really, really annoying if you’re not systematic and strict and literal with the meaning of the sentence. In my opinion, two of the WRONG answers sound better than the right answer. But my opinion doesn’t matter, and neither does “sound.” (Plus, who the heck starts having babies when they’re over the age of thirty? That’s really, really old. Oh, wait… crap. I’m over 30, huh?)

We also covered this one in a recent YouTube webinar on comparisons, so feel free to click here if you prefer your explanations in video form.

Before we look at the individual answer choices, hopefully the word “it” jumps out at you. It’s a singular pronoun, and… well, I guess it has to refer to “the age of thirty.” It’s really the only plausible singular referent, since “women” and “babies” are plural. And that’s one of the big keys to making sense of the question.


So now we have: “…more babies were born to women over the age of thirty than under the age of thirty.”

I’ll be honest: I don’t love this answer choice. It sounds a little bit weird to me, but it’s also perfectly logical: the heart of the comparison revolves around the ages of the women. So I guess we have to keep (A), and see if there’s anything better down there somewhere.


(B) gives us: “…more babies were born to women over the age of thirty than born under the age of thirty.” Wait, that arguably sounds OK, but it’s nonsense: literally, (B) is telling us that the BABIES were born under the age of thirty. I mean, sure: babies are definitely under thirty, but that’s not the point that the sentence is trying to make.

So (B) is out.


In (C), we have: “…more babies were born to women over the age of thirty than they were under the age of thirty.”

First of all, what does “they” refer to? You could argue for either “women” or “babies”, but neither makes much sense:

• “…more babies were born to women over the age of thirty than babies were under the age of thirty.” → nope, that’s complete garbage
• “…more babies were born to women over the age of thirty than women were under the age of thirty.” → also very confusing nonsense

So (C) is out, too.



(D) gives us: “…more babies were born to women over the age of thirty than there had been under the age of thirty.”

Why would we use the past perfect tense “had been” here? When you think about the timeline, that doesn’t make any sense: the action in past perfect tense has to occur before another action in simple past. So this is literally saying that “there had been” babies born to women under the age of thirty BEFORE “babies were born to women over the age of thirty.” That makes no sense at all.

(D) is gone.


I actually think that (E) sounds pretty good, but it’s wrong for exactly the same reason as (D): the past perfect tense is illogical in this situation.

Plus, we still have a pesky comparison issue, even if you ignore the verb tense problem: “…more babies were born to women over the age of thirty than had been born under the age of thirty.” This is similar to the logical problem in (B): it sounds like we’re saying that BABIES were born under the age of thirty, and that’s clearly not what we’re trying to say.

So (E) is gone, and we’re left with (A). Whether you like the way it sounds or not.