The cumulative percentage for a given category means the percentage of people who fall into that category, or a lower category. To work out the cumulative percentage for each category, you just have to add the percentage for that category to all of the percentages for the categories which are lower. The table below shows an example of cumulative percentages using the same data as in the previous It is a way of presenting the same data in a more descriptive way.

Percentage and cumulative percentage of females by age group.

Age groupNumber of womenPercentage of the totalCumulative percentage
under 30 200 17 17
30–40 400 33 50
41–50 350 29 79
over 50 250 21 100
all ages 1200 100 100
Last modified: Monday, 14 July 2014, 6:40 PM