India overtakes China to become world’s most populous country

Asia-Pacific, News May 2, 2023 , by IRIA No Comments

The United Nations calculations say that India’s population has reached 1.429 billion people, surpassing the current population of mainland China. According to the UN, India’s population is increasing at a rate of 67000 babies each day.

The exact size of India’s population is not known due to the delay in the government census, the UN report has estimated the number based on India’s birth rate. For a long time, China held the title to be the world’s most populous country, while India was not far behind. Both India and China have seen enormous growth in population in the last few decades, however, China’s fertility rate dropped dramatically in recent years while India’s kept increasing.

India’s fertility rate played a major role in the population explosion. India’s fertility rate stood at 5.7 births per woman for a long time since 1950. Although the fertility rate in India has decreased to 2 children per woman today, the decline has been slow. China on the other hand had one of the lowest fertility rates in the world in 2022 standing at 1.2 children per woman.

In the last few decades, both countries made concerted efforts to curb rapid population growth through policies that targeted fertility levels. These policies, together with investments in human capital and gender equality, contributed to China’s plummeting fertility rate in the 1970s and to the more gradual declines that followed in the 1980s and 1990s.

According to the UN report, more than 100 million people, about 24% of urban Indians, reside in slums. Among the slums in India, one of the world’s largest is in the suburbs of Mumbai city – the Dharavi shantytown where around 1 million people reside within just one square mile.

The UN expects India’s population to keep increasing at substantially large rates compared to China’s in the coming year, creating an unachievable gap between the population of the two countries. India’s population would hit its peak in 2064, becoming 1.7 billion, before starting to increase at a decreasing rate.

India also enacted policies to discourage the formation of large families and to slow population growth, including through its national family welfare program beginning in the 1950s. India’s lower human capital investment and slower economic growth during the 1970s and 1980s contributed to a more gradual fertility decline than in China.

*^{India has become the most populous country in the world. (Image Credit UN)}*

United Nations report also provided three key suggestions to the countries where the population is rapidly increasing. These suggestions focus on examining and resolving the challenges arising due to the increasing population of countries at different stages of the process.

Promoting reproductive rights and providing more autonomy to women in making decisions about family planning
Decreasing dependency on hydrocarbon and non-renewable energy sources
Collecting high-quality population data in uniform intervals to keep a close eye on the fertility rates

The UN recommends that a national census be taken at least once every 10 years. In China, the most recent census was taken in November 2020. India’s planned 2021 census was delayed due to challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and is now scheduled for 2024.