India may have already surpassed China as the world's most populous country. According to data projections from the World Population Review (WPR), by the end of 2022, India's population would be 14.7 crore, which is approximately 50 lakh more than the 141.2 crore declared by China on January 17. According to official announcements, this is the first fall in China since the 1960s.
India's population
According to WPR, India's population as of January 18 increased to 142.3 crore. It has also been predicted that despite the slow growth of the population, it will still climb until at least 2050.
India is anticipated to have the world's fastest-growing major economy with 50 per cent population under 30. According to the UN this milestone was supposed to be reached later this year.
China’s population decline
According to information by the National Statistics Bureau, China's population decreased by 8.5 lakh in 2022 in comparison to the previous year. As the country's population crests and begins to shrink, experts say, it will face challenges ranging from supporting the elderly to filling the ranks of its military.
With the trend expected to continue, the UN estimates China's population will fall from 1.41 billion to about 1.31 billion by 2050 and keep shrinking from there.
Beijing previously tried to rein in its population growth. Worries that China's population was getting too big prompted it to adopt its "one-child policy" in the late 1970s.
Beijing says the policy prevented 400 million additional births, but demographers disagree about how much of the drop in birth rates is explained by the policy.
The one-child policy came on top of existing societal changes, notably the flocking of people to live in cities during the economic boom, demographers say.
Beijing's most immediate demographic challenge is an ageing population: Tuesday's figures showed that almost 20 per cent of the population is now 60 or older, and Chinese estimates say the number will rise to 30 per cent, or more than 400 million people, by 2035.
With inputs from agencies
