Sentence Correction

In 1990's, there are more babies born by women over thirty years old than under it.

[A] than under it

than were they under it

[C] than had been under it

[D] than were the babies

[E] than those were under it


The OA given is A.


All the other options are wrong as follows:

B] Pronoun 'they' is ambigious. whether is refers to Babies or women

C] wrong use of past perfect tense.

D] wrong comparison completely.

E] pronoun 'those' is ambigious. same as B.


Now the question that I have is 'is a noun phrase considered equally to a noun by itself???'


'Thirty years old' is a noun phrase. and can it be used by a pronoun it????

Kindly any of the experts please help...

Not many lessons to take away from this question. The use of the pronoun "it" is not appropriate in this sentence. In fact, all of the answer choices are wrong for one reason or another.

Whoever wrote this question does not have a good grasp on the English language, as there is a bad idiom early in the sentence (In 1990's should be In the 1990's) and there is really no good way to correct the underlined portion.

If I were going to write a sentence like this, I woud probably say, "In the 1990's, more women over the age of thirty gave birth than did women under the age of thirty."