India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country in 2023, according to the 27th edition of the United Nations’ World Population Prospects, 2022, released on Monday, Trend reports citing The Indian Express.
In 2022, China remains the most populous country in the world with 1,426 million, but India has caught up with a marginally less population of 1,412 million.
It took 123 years for the population to double to 2 billion in 1927. Since then, the number of years taken to add a billion people has only dropped. The last billion, which will take the population to 8 billion later this year, will be added in just 11 years.
The global population will reach 8 billion on November 15, 2022, more than three times the population of 2.5 billion in 1950.
The findings come in the backdrop of a decrease in fertility rates across the globe. The UN report finds that in 2020, for the first time since 1950, the rate of population growth fell below 1 per cent per year and it is projected to continue to slow in the next few decades and through the end of this century.
The population of China was 1,144 million in 1990 compared with India’s at 861 million then.
The UN projections say that by 2050, India’s population will reach 1,668 million, far exceeding China’s declining population at 1,317 million. The global population by 2050 would have touched 9.7 billion.
The world’s two most populous regions in 2022 were Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, with 2.3 billion people, representing 29 per cent of the global population, and Central and Southern Asia, with 2.1 billion (26 per cent). China and India accounted for the largest populations in these regions, with more than 1.4 billion each in 2022, says the report. Central and Southern Asia is expected to become the most populous region in the world by 2037.
The latest UN projections suggest that the global population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 10.4 billion in 2100.