India is facing the challenges of overpopulation. Countries like Japan and South Korea to the opposite challenges of the declining population. In China, the population will start to decline before 2025. Low fertility rates also in Singapore and Thailand.
Tokyo () – In Asia, the gap between young countries with population growth and those that are aging and seeing their populations decrease is becoming increasingly evident. The average age in India is 27.9, in the Philippines it is 24.7 and in Pakistan it is 20.4. In contrast, in Japan it is 48.7 years and in South Korea it is 43.9: a difference that has increased in recent decades.
In November, the world population reached eight billion, according to United Nations estimates, and more than half of the world’s people live in Asia. In addition to China and India, which have more than 1.4 billion inhabitants, five other countries exceed 100 million: Indonesia with 276 million, Pakistan 236, Bangladesh 171, Japan 124 and the Philippines 116. Vietnam is close with 98 million.
Countries like India, which will surpass China in population in the future, face great challenges. According to the World Bank, to sustain population growth, Delhi will need to invest $840 billion in urban infrastructure over the next 15 years. The growing domestic demand for food could affect trade relations with other countries. Although it is expanding, the national economy does not seem capable of absorbing all the inhabitants of working age.
For its part, Japan is dealing with a dramatic drop in births, also aggravated by the pandemic, which threatens the sustainability of its socioeconomic system. According to Nikkei Asia, already in 2018 there were 3.49 million abandoned homes in the country, mainly in depopulated rural areas.
It’s not just the Japanese and South Koreans who have demographic problems in Asia. China’s population will start to decline before 2025, while Singapore and Thailand are aging rapidly.
