By the middle of 2023, India’s population is predicted to reach 1.4286 billion, surpassing mainland China’s population forecast of 1.4257 billion.

The data are now reflected in the Wednesday update to the UN’s World Population Dashboard. Since China’s population growth has halted and the country’s population fell for the first time since the early 1960s last year, the overtaking has been widely projected.

China’s population is expected to shrink to 1.313 billion people by 2050 and to 800 million people or less by 2100, according to a prior U.N. prediction.

According to experts, the reduction was caused in part by the nation’s long-standing one-child policy, which was changed to two children in 2016 and three children in 2021.

The “special administrative regions” of Hong Kong, with a population of 7.5 million, and Macao, with a population of 0.7 million, are not included in the U.N. statistics.

According to government figures reported by Reuters, India’s population growth has decreased from 1.7% during the preceding ten years to an average of 1.2% since 2011.

According to U.N. statistics, 26% of the population is 10 to 24 years old, compared to 18% in China.

The latest recent census figures from India were released in 2011.

The United Nations Population Fund warns against forgetting human rights and autonomy in conversations about whether population growth is a worry in its State of World Population 2023 study, which was released on Wednesday. The report discusses the world population topping 8 billion people in November 2022.

“Human reproduction is neither the problem nor the solution” to challenges such as climate change, pandemics, conflicts, mass displacement and economic uncertainty, said the body’s Executive Director Natalia Kanem.

(Adapted from TheGuardian.com)

Categories: Geopolitics, Uncategorized