India is projected to surpass China as the world's most populous country over the next three decades. The United Nations World Population Prospects 2019 report shows that India and Nigeria will host the two fastest growing populations, with India adding 273 million people and Nigeria 200 million by 2050, the rapid pace fuelled by vastly different factors.
According to the Hindustan Times, India will overtake China to become the world’s most populous country in 2027. The world’s population is projected to increase by 2 billion people, from 7.7 billion now to 9.7 billion in 2050, according to the report. The UN report 'The World Population Prospects 2019' added that the world's population is expected to increase by two billion people in the next 30 years -- from 7.7 billion currently to 9.7 billion in 2050.
The report said more than half of the projected increase in the global population up to 2050 will be concentrated in just nine countries, led by India and followed by Nigeria, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Indonesia, Egypt, and the US. India’s total fertility rate (TFR, the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime) ) is 2.2, with half of the country’s population in 24 states having reached “replacement TFR” of 2.1 or less, which is number of children per woman at which a population replaces itself and stops growing. In Nigeria, the TFR is 5.4.
AR Nanda, former secretary, Union ministry of health, and trustee, Indian Association for the Study of Population, said ahead of the World Population Day told the Hindustan Times, “Even if the TFR across all states were to fall immediately to two births or less per woman, India’s population would continue to grow, as it will in countries and regions where fertility has declined recently. In India, Latin America and the Caribbean, virtually all of the projected population growth till 2050 will be driven by the population momentum from a largely young population.”
The report also confirmed that the world's population is growing older due to increasing life expectancy and falling fertility levels and that the number of countries experiencing a reduction in population size is growing. By 2050, one in six people in the world will be over age 65 (16 percent), up from one in 11 in 2019 (9 percent). The number of persons aged 80 years or over is projected to triple, from 143 million in 2019 to 426 million in 2050.
