India's population to surpass China's by 2023
On 11th July, 2022 the United Nations released a report saying that India will surpass China as the world’s most populous country by 2023. And within a mere 4 months, the world population will reach 8 billion. This number will peak in the 2080s with 10.4 billion but many demographers believe that this could happen sooner than expected.
With 2.3 billion people, Eastern and south eastern Asia represent 29% of the global population while central and southern Asia with 2.1 billion represent 26%.
According to World Population Prospects 2019, a book by the Economic and Social Affairs Department of the United Nations, China with 1.44 billion and India with 1.39 billion people represent 19 and 18% of the world’s population. With one of the lowest fertility rates in the world (1.15 children per woman) China’s population is set to decrease by 31.4 million or 2.2%. China abandoned its one child policy in 2016 after 35 years.
While there is a net drop in birth rates in most developed countries with the replacement rate being below 2.1 children per woman, the rise forecast will primarily be concentrated in these 8 countries in the coming years - Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania. Even though India’s replacement rate has reduced to *2 from 2.2 in 2015-16, India’s population continues to rise more than other countries because as previous generations have children, there are more people having children even though they’re having fewer children than their parents. The population growth rate is also attributed to advancements in medicine which is allowing more children to survive into adulthood and old age.
While the world population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950, this is also a time when the environment is under utmost pressure, another reminder for us to respect and conserve natural resources that have sustained us till now.
*According to India’s National Family Health Survey data