Can I use "above that", "beyond that" or "from there" to refer to an age group?

Question

I was told that native speakers sometimes use above with ages. An example could be that anyone above the age of 18 is allowed to participate.

Therefore, I can use "above that" in my sentence and it would be short for "above that age". I was also told that I could use "beyond that". Is this true?

I also want to know if I can use "from there" to refer to the 30-39 age bracket.

Support dropped to the lowest level in the 30-39 age bracket, at 30%. Above that/beyond that/from there, support rose only slightly to 40% for the over-49s.

Answer 1

In that context, you can use "above that" to mean age groups older than 39. The others don't work.

"Beyond that" doesn't clearly refer to age because it normally means something like, "other than that". Also, there isn't any direction implied, so even if we did understand that it meant "moving past this age group", we wouldn't know if it meant up or down.

"From there" is clearer than "beyond that", but it has the same problem as "beyond that" where we don't know which direction we're moving. You could say "upwards from there" instead, and that would be clear.

Answer 2

You'll find the adverbs above, over, past, beyond and possibly others used with age. Some may be used more than others but I wouldn't want to say one was more idiomatic than others. It could depend on your perspective. If you're talking about age rising then you might find that 'over' or 'above' are most appropriate, whereas if you're measuring age on a horizontal axis then 'past' or 'beyond' might seem more fitting. Having said that, you are displaying age groups on your visual, and the names of groups are whatever they are in your data so wouldn't have any bearing on how they are displayed visually.