India population 1.45bn, to be twice China’s in 2085
India's population is projected to reach 1.5 billion by 2100, double that of China, with the US among top countries driven by immigration for growth.
New Delhi: By 2100, India’s population of around 1.5 billion will be over twice that of China’s 633 million, highlighting the huge demographic dividend available to the country, according to estimates released by the United Nations on Thursday. India will hit an inflection point in 2085 when its population (1.61 billion) will be double of China’s (806 million), and the gap will only widen in the next few years, said the report.
India and China will be followed in the population rankings in 2100 by Pakistan (511 million), Nigeria (477 million), Democratic Republic of the Congo (431 million), and the US (421 million), with the last being one of the 62 countries in the world where immigration rather than excess of births over deaths or increase in life expectancy is expected to be the major driver of population growth, according to the biennial World Population Prospects (WPP), released by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) Population Division. The US’s current population is 345 million.
The report puts India’s current population at 1.451 billion, nine million more than what this number was believed to be two years ago. Although in the realm of projection, these are the most authoritative estimates of India’s population due to the absence of a decadal census after 2011. The 2021 census has been postponed indefinitely, first because of the pandemic, and then for reasons never really disclosed.
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The marginal upward revision in India’s population, unlike what demographic alarmists and scaremongers like to claim, is not a sign of an imminent population explosion. While India is expected to be the most populous country in the world throughout this century, the latest WPP projections do not see any major change in India’s larger demographic transition trajectory.
India’s population will reach around 1.692 billion by 2054 before peaking in 2061 at 1.701 billion, according to the report. Interestingly, an aging China is set to lose around half of its population in the next 75 years. The current median age of the Indian population is 28.4 years, compared to China’s 39.6 years and the US’s 38.3 years. By 2100 these numbers will be 47.8 years, 60.7 years, and 45.3 years respectively.
India’s key demographic challenge, according to the report, is not preventing population growth, which is more a result of past momentum, but effectively utilising the limited window it has for exploiting its demographic dividend. India’s working age population, the WPP projections show, will peak by 2049, 12 years earlier than its overall population has peaked. At its peak, India’s working age population will be 1,027 million.
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“In about 100 countries or areas, the working-age population (between 20 and 64 years) will grow through 2054, offering a window of opportunity known as the demographic dividend. To capitalize on this opportunity, countries must invest in education, health, and infrastructure, and implement reforms to create jobs and improve government efficiency”, the WPP report says.
The reason for India’s working-age population peaking before its overall population is the country’s declining fertility rate, which is defined as the number of children a woman has in her lifetime. India’s fertility rate had already fallen below the replacement level of 2.1 in 2020 and was 1.962 in 2024. Therefore, future population growth is more a result of the momentum of past growth. In other words, India’s large population in the reproductive age is expected to grow its total population for some more decades even at fertility levels lower than the replacement level. The replacement level is the fertility rate required to maintain population size at a constant size in the long run if there is no migration.
PEAKS AND TROUGHS
What are the other key takeaways in the latest WPP numbers? It has made a small upward revision to its 2022 forecast of world population from 8.1 billion to 8.2 billion. The world’s population is now expected to peak at 10.29 billion in 2084 instead of the 10.43 billion in 2086 estimate given in the 2022 report. There is a similar reduction in the expected global population in 2100 -- 10.2 billion instead of 10.3 billion. While revisions in UN’s population projections are a routine affair -- they have to be updated when data from the real world becomes available -- and back to back reports do not generally have major changes, long-term revisions do reveal substantive changes. There is now an 80% probability that world population will peak within the current century, compared to a 30% probability seen in the estimates made a decade ago, the WPP-2024 report said.
“The earlier occurrence of a peak in the projected size of the global population is due to several factors including lower than-expected levels of fertility in recent years in some of the world’s largest countries, particularly China,” the report said. The population of China and 62 other countries – accounting for 28% of global population in 2024 -- has already peaked by 2024.In another 48 countries, accounting for 10% of the world population in 2024, population is expected to peak between 2025 and 2054. In the remaining 126 countries (India among them), population is likely to peak either beyond 2054 or even 2100.
POPULATION DRIVERS
There are different drivers of population growth or lack of it across countries. While global fertility rate in 2024 is 2.25 births per woman, it is below the replacement level in more than half of all countries now. In nearly one-fifth of all countries, the fertility rate is already below 1.4, sometimes called “ultra-low” fertility, which means their population is shrinking. In some countries with low fertility, the impact of policies aimed at raising fertility is also likely to decrease over time. “By the late 2030s, half of the women in countries with populations that have already peaked will be too old to have children by natural means. Because the share of women in the reproductive age range (roughly, between 15 and 49 years) is projected to decline rapidly in such countries, the impact on population size of policies aimed at raising fertility levels is likely to diminish over time,” the report says.
But immigration is expected to be a major driver of population growth in 62 countries through 2100, and is believed to have already pushed the peaking of population in many of them.
LIVING LONGER
In another statistic which shows normalisation from disruption caused by Covid-19 , life expectancy has returned to the levels seen before the pandemic in nearly all countries, the WPP report said. Global life expectancy at birth decreased from 72.6 in 2019 to 70.9 years in 2020 and 2021, but has improved to 73.3 years in 2024. This number is projected to increase to 77.4 by 2054. Improving life expectancy is unlikely to prevent population decline because of falling fertility in the coming decades. Another outcome of improving life expectancy is that more than half of global deaths are likely to occur at age 80 years or higher in 2054, compared to 17% in 1995.
While the number of deaths among children under five fell below 5 million for the first time in 2023 since at least 1950, according to the report “ high levels of child mortality persist in many regions even though such deaths are largely preventable. Nearly all deaths of children under age 5 (95% of the total) take place in 126 countries with populations that are still growing, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Nigeria and Pakistan,” the report said.