In seven years, India will surpass China to become the world’s most populous country and will have 1.7 billion residents by 2050, new projections from the United Nations show. Experts, however, caution that India might be lowering its fertility at a faster rate than what the U.N.’s projections indicate.
The 2015 revision to the U.N.’s World Population Projections was released early on Thursday. The world population reached 7.3 billion as of mid-2015, adding approximately one billion people in the past 12 years. The world population, however, is growing slower now; 10 years ago, the growth rate was 1.24 per cent a year, while today, it is growing by 1.18 per cent, or approximately, an additional 83 million people annually.
It will take 15 years to add the next billion people, taking the world population to 8.5 billion in 2030. By 2050, the world will have 9.7 billion people and 11.2 billion by 2100. As a region, Africa will have its population — propelled to a large extent by Nigeria which will be the third largest populated country in the world in 2050 overtaking the U.S. — grow the fastest. The population of 48 countries, most of them in Europe and including Japan, will in contrast shrink between 2015 and 2050.
The median age of the global population — that is, the age at which half the population is older and half is younger — is 29.6. About one-quarter (26 per cent) of the world’s people are under 15 years of age, 62 per cent are aged 15 to 59, and 12 per cent 60 or above. India is younger than the world; the median age is a full three years younger and 28.8 per cent are under the age of 15, while just 8.9 per cent are 60 or over. By 2050, India will have aged significantly, and the share of people over 60 will be twice as big, while the median age will be 37.3.
China’s population will start declining by the 2030s, while India’s is projected to decline only after 2069 when its population is around 1.75 billion. However, demographic experts say the U.N.’s projections may not be keeping pace with the speed at which India is reducing its fertility. As of 2013, India’s Sample Registration System (SRS) — the official source of fertility statistics, which come from the Registrar-General’s office — said the total fertility rate (average number of children per woman) was down to 2.3. However, the U.N. projects a rate of 2.34 for 2015-20. By the SRS rates, India could reach replacement fertility levels — when every woman has just enough children to replace the parents on average — by 2020, but the U.N. projections would see this happening around a decade later.
