India will overtake China as the world’s most populous country in thecoming week, hitting almost 1.43 billion people, the United Nations saidMonday.
“By the end of this month, India’s population is expected to reach1,425,775,850 people, matching and then surpassing the population ofmainland China,” the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs said.
Last week the UN’s annual State of World Population report had said themilestone would come by midyear 2023.
India is topping China due to both rapid growth in its own population and adecline in China’s after hitting 1.426 billion last year.
Regarded as the world’s most heavily populated country since the fall ofthe Roman Empire in the 5th Century CE, China is expected to declinesteadily to around one billion people by the end of this century, accordingto UN projections.
The China data does not include Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau.
Meanwhile, India’s population “is virtually certain” to continue to grow inthe coming decades, according to the United Nations.
The median UN projection sees India hitting 1.5 billion by mid-century –though officials stressed it could be much lower or higher.
China’s fall is heavily tied to decades of maintaining a strict one-childpolicy for married couples, which ended in 2016.
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In addition, its slower growth is attributed to the rising cost of livingand the growing number of Chinese women going into the workforce andseeking higher education.
Last year, China’s fertility rate fell to one of the lower levels in theworld at 1.2 births per woman.
For India, which has taken much longer than China to get population growthunder control, the fertility rate was 2.0 births per woman, just below the2.1 replacement level.
Yet both countries had about the same level of fertility, just under sixbirths per woman, in 1970, said John Wilmoth, director of the PopulationDivision and the Economic and Social Affairs Department.
“It took three and a half decades for India to experience the samefertility reduction that occurred in China over just seven years during the1970s,” he said.
A key reason for the difference was Beijing’s one-child policy; another wasIndia’s lower human capital investment and slower economic growth duringthe 1970s and 1980s, according to the UN.
