India to become most populous country this week

India will overtake China as the world’s most populous country this week, hitting almost 1.43 billion people, the UN says.

ndia will have a population of more than 1.425 billion by next week.

India will overtake China as the world’s most populous country this week, hitting almost 1.43 billion people, the UN says.

“By the end of this month, India’s population is expected to reach 1,425,775,850 people, matching and then surpassing the population of mainland China,” the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs said.

Last week the UN’s annual State of World Population report had said the milestone would come by mid-year.

India is topping China due to rapid growth in its population and a decline in China’s after hitting 1.426 billion last year.

Regarded as the world’s most heavily populated country since the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th Century, China is expected to decline steadily to one billion people by the end of this century. The China data does not include Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau.

India’s population “is virtually certain” to continue to grow in the coming decades, according to the UN. The median UN projection has 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-child policy for married couples, which ended in 2016.

In addition, its slower growth is attributed to the rising cost of living and the growing number of Chinese women joining the workforce and seeking higher education. Last year, China’s fertility rate fell to one of the lower levels in the world at 1.2 births per woman.

For India, which has taken much longer than China to get population growth under control, the fertility rate was 2.0 births per woman, just below the 2.1 replacement level.

Yet both countries had about the same level of fertility, just under six births per woman, in 1970, said John Wilmoth, director of the Population Division and the Economic and Social ­Affairs Department.

A key reason for the difference was Beijing’s one-child policy; another was India’s lower human capital investment and slower economic growth during the 1970s and ’80s, according to the UN.

Mr Wilmoth said the reason the population report last week said India would surpass China by mid-year was that it was using a projection made based on data last year. The projection announced on Monday was based on more recent data, though still a projection.

AFP