Pie Charts (Proportions, Percentages & Shares)
Master proportions, percentage breakdowns, majority vs minority shares, and comparing pie charts across multiple years or demographics.
Convert percentages into natural proportional fractions (e.g., 50% = half, 33% = a third, 75% = three-quarters). Report the largest segment first, then group smaller shares.
Select Model Report
Key Reporting Lexicon
Fractions & Proportions
Shifts in Share
Household Expenditure in Japan (1980 vs 2020)
"The pie charts below show the breakdown of average household spending across five categories in Japan in 1980 and 2020. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant."
Two pie charts comparing household spending allocations across Food, Housing, Transport, Healthcare, and Leisure in Japan between 1980 and 2020.
The two pie charts delineate how Japanese families allocated their household expenditure across five distinct categories in 1980 and 2020.
Overall, the most noticeable change was the sharp contraction in the share of spending on food, whereas housing and healthcare witnessed substantial increases, with housing emerging as the predominant household expense by 2020.
In 1980, food constituted the largest budgetary outlay, accounting for nearly four in ten yen spent (38%). Housing represented the second-largest commitment at exactly 20%, followed by transport at 17%. Leisure and healthcare constituted the smallest portions, at 17% and 8% respectively.
Four decades later, expenditure priorities shifted considerably. Housing overtook food to become the primary expense, expanding to nearly a third of total spending (32%). Conversely, the proportion allocated to food plummeted by half to 19%. Meanwhile, healthcare experienced more than a twofold surge to 18%, matching leisure (17%) and transport, which slipped slightly to 14%.
Examiner Rules for Comparative Pie Charts
- Do not only repeat numbers like "38%", "20%". Use proportional phrases like "nearly two-fifths", "one in five", or "roughly a third" to earn high Lexical Resource marks.
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