suelahmed
Thanks a lot arichinna.
Can you give me one more example other than this question where THAT is used to compare two or more things or situations ?
That can be used to refer to inanimate things during comparisons. Below are few examples from GMAT:1. The quality of care at university hospitals is lower than that at other kinds of hospitals.
"that" refers back to quality.
2. Courses offered online tend to deal with subject matter that is less challenging than that of classroom-based courses
"that" refers back to subject matter
"That" can be both singular and plural during comparison. It takes the number from the antecedent which it refers to. Also, it has to refer to the closest noun without ambiguity. In the current example, "that" CANNOT refer back to people - "married couples" or the "three-fifths".But, the example can be re-written as
A decent number of all married couples in the US now, significantly more than that in the earlier decades, have two incomes.Here, "that" will refer to the "number"