India To Surpass China As The Most Populous Country By Mid-2023: UN

India is set to overtake China as the world's most populous country by mid-year with almost three million more people.

India is set to overtake China as the world's most populous country by mid-year with almost three million more people.

Source : AFP

India is set to overtake China as the world's most populous country by mid-year with almost three million more people, UN estimates showed on Wednesday, as reported by the news agency AFP. According to the United Nations Population Fund's State of World Population report, India's population will be 1.4286 billion compared to China's 1.4257 billion at mid-year.

In 2022, the number of people in China shrank for the first time since 1960, when millions starved to death under the disastrous agricultural policies of former leader Mao Zedong. Beijing ended its strict "one-child policy", imposed in the 1980s amid overpopulation fears, in 2016 and started letting couples have three children in 2021, AFP reported.

According to AFP, China faces a looming demographic decline as birth rates plunge and its workforce ages. Several regions have also announced plans to boost birth rates –- but official efforts have so far failed to reverse the decline. India has no recent official data on how many people it has because it has not conducted a census since 2011. India's once-in-a-decade census was due to be held in 2021 but was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Half of the population of the Asian giant are under 30. The country also faces huge challenges providing electricity, food and housing for its growing population, with many of its huge cities already struggling to cope. According to the new UN report, the global population would have hit 8.045 billion by mid-2023.

Other countries, mostly in Europe and Asia, can expect a demographic slump over the coming decades, according to other UN figures published last July which forecast how the world's population will develop between now and 2100.

In Africa population is expected to rise from 1.4 to 3.9 billion inhabitants by 2100, with some 38 percent of Earth dwellers living there, against around 18 percent today. Eight nations with more than 10 million inhabitants, most of them in Europe, saw their populations shrink over the past decade. Japan is also seeing a decline due to its ageing population, losing more than three million inhabitants between 2011 and 2021. The population of the entire planet, meanwhile, is only expected to decline in the 2090s, after peaking at 10.4 billion, according to the UN.