India will overtake China as world’s most populous country by mid-year, UN says

() — India is poised to overtake China as the most populous nation in the worldwith almost 3 million more people by the middle of this year, according to data published by the United Nations on Wednesday.

India’s population by mid-year is projected to reach 1.428 million, compared to China’s 1.425 million; there are 2.9 million inhabitants less, according to the “Report on the state of the world population” of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for 2023.

UN officials said it was not possible to determine the exact date of the change, due to “uncertainty” over data coming from China and India. India’s last census was in 2011 and the most recent, scheduled for 2021, was delayed during the covid-19 pandemic.

The United States is a very distant third, with an estimated population of 340 million, the data showed, reflecting information available through February.

By 2050, eight countries will account for half of the projected growth in the world’s population: the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania, according to the UNFPA report.

China has held the distinction of the most populous country since at least 1950when the UN population records began.

China and India together will account for more than a third of the estimated world population, which is expected to reach 8.045 million by mid-year, according to the UN report. But contrary to public perception, population growth has slowed in both countries, particularly in China, which posted a population decline for the first time in six decades last year.

China’s population fell in 2022 to 1.411 million, about 850,000 fewer people than the previous year, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The birth rate also fell to a record low of 6.77 births per 1,000 people, down from 7.52 a year earlier and the lowest level since the founding of communist China in 1949.

India’s overtaking of China will have major economic implications for both Asian giants. Along with flagging population data, China also reported one of its worst economic growth numbers in nearly half a century last year, underscoring the major challenges facing the country as its workforce dwindles and the ranks of the retirees increase.

Beijing’s leaders have tried to downplay the importance of being overtaken by India.

“The demographic dividend of a country depends not only on the total number, but also on the quality; not only in population, but also in talent,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters on Wednesday when asked about the latest UN screening.

India’s working-age population is more than 900 million, according to 2021 data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. This number is expected to reach more than 1 billion over the next decade, according to the Indian government.

But these numbers could become a drag if politicians don’t create enough jobs, experts warned. The data already shows that a growing number of Indians are not even looking for work, given the lack of opportunities and low wages.

India’s labor force participation rate, an estimate of the active labor force and people looking for work, stood at 46%, one of the lowest in Asia, according to 2021 World Bank data. By comparison, the rates in China and the United States stood at 68% and 61%, respectively, in the same year.

“India is sitting on a time bomb,” Chandrasekhar Sripada, a professor of organizational behavior at the Indian Business School, told earlier this year. “There will be social unrest if you can’t create enough jobs in a relatively short period of time.”

Are individual rights at risk?

In its report, UNFPA said that while reaching the milestone of 8 billion people on the planet was a reminder that more and more people are living longer and healthier lives, concerns about the number had heightened anxiety among governments and led to to adopt more policies aimed at influencing the fertility rate.

In particular, it pointed to governments trying to influence fertility rates through family planning targets and policies, which can fuel forms of gender-based discrimination.

In India, when some states proposed a two-child policy in 2021, which included financial incentives for sterilization and penalties such as loss of benefits, commentators pointed to the deleterious effects of similar policies.

“Sex-selective abortion, preference for boys, denial of paternity for girls, prenatal sex determination, and violence against women for giving birth to girls will all increase,” says a commentator quoted in the report. .

The national government made it clear in various forums that it was opposed to coercive family planning, including in parliament, where it said it did not support such policies, the report added.

Some of those damaging effects were seen in China as a result of its one-child policy, which was ended in 2015 after 35 years, allowing families to have two children.

“The relationship between reproductive autonomy and a healthier life is an indisputable truth: as women are empowered to make decisions about their bodies and lives, they and their families prosper, and their societies also prosper,” said the executive director. of UNFPA, Natalia Kanem, in her foreword to the report.

But, he added, that was not the message that was heard the most in the news of the 8 billion milestone last year.

“Instead, many headlines warned of a world teetering toward overpopulation, or of entire countries and regions aging into obsoleteness. Somehow, when human numbers are counted and population milestones are passed, the rights and potential of people all too easily fade into the background.”

— ‘s Simone McCarthy contributed reporting.