The table below presents the number of children ever born to women aged 40-44 years ni Australia for each year the information was colected since 1981. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

The table shows the data collected for Australian

women

between the ages of 40 to 44, categorized with respect to the number of

children

they gave birth to, starting from none to 4 or more across four different years since 1981.

Overall

, most

women

gave birth to two

children

and

this

increased consistently each year. The share decreased significantly for the ones having 3 or more

children

whereas

it increased for the ones staying single or having a single child between 1981 and 2006. In 1981, 29% of the

women

gave birth to two infants making

this

the dominant choice which continued to be the case till 2006 (38.2%) increasing throughout the period.

This

upward trend was followed by those bearing one or zero

children

, each with a share of 7.6 and 8.5 in 1981 respectively, to 13.2 and 15.9 in 2006, respectively. Contrarily, despite starting out with the second highest percentage of 27.6 in 1981,

women

with 4 or more

children

dropped in numbers (18.9%) and were overtaken by those having 3 in 1986 (27%).

While

the downward trend continued for both the categories,

women

with 3

children

stayed ahead in numbers in 1996 and 2001 as well,

whereas

4 or more

children

now became the rarity with only 11% of the

women

going for it in 2001 accounting for the least share among all.