According to a report published by the UN on Monday, India is going to be the world’s most populous country around 2027, overtaking China. So, in about eight years from now, India is going to be undefeated in one sector – sadly, its population.
According to the World Population Review 2019, India currently ranks second in the index (out of 230 countries), with over 17 per cent of the world population. “Today, India’s growth rate is 1.08% while China, the most populated country in the world at the moment, has a growth rate of only 0.35%. By 2050, India’s population will hit 1.66 billion people, and China will come in second place with a population of 1.36 billion,” says the review. In other words, India is expected to add nearly 273 million people between 2019 and 2050 and will remain the most populated country through the end of the current century.
Previous UN projections had estimated that India will surpass China as the world’s most populous country as early as 2022. But with factors like the decreasing fertility rate (which currently is at 2.2 births per woman) and emigration, the growth rate has been slower than estimated. According to current calculations, it’s been pushed by five years, from 2022 to 2027.
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“Many of the fastest growing populations are in the poorest countries, where population growth brings additional challenges in the effort to eradicate poverty, achieve greater equality, combat hunger and malnutrition and strengthen the coverage and quality of health and education systems to ensure that no one is left behind,” said Liu Zhenmin, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. And this is already a big concern in India with its current population.
The World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights, published by the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, says that the world’s population is expected to increase, albeit at a slow rate, by two billion in the next 30 years (from 7.7 billion to 9.7 billion). More than half of this projected increase 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.
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