Demography Is Not a Destiny

It is finally official: India is now the most populated nation in the world, outpacing China, which held the number one position for around two centuries. Last year, the United Nations publication, World Population Prospects 2022, projected that India’s population will surpass that of China in 2023. And earlier last month, the State of World Population report of the United Nations Population Fund estimated India’s population to be 1.428 billion in 2023 as against 1.425 billion in China. The global population is now 8.045 billion, of which 1.151 billion are in the least developed countries, 6.769 million in the less developed regions and 1.276 billion in the more developed regions.

That means global population grew almost eightfold over the last two centuries. While it is estimated that it took almost 50,000 years for global population to touch 1 billion by around 1804, it then doubled to 2 billion by 1927, and further grew to 3 billion by 1960. Later, in another four decades, the global population again doubled to 6 billion in 2000. It then grew by another 2 billion in a little more than two decades to touch 8 billion by 2023. It is now forecasted to reach 9 billion by the late 2030s. Estimates indicate that the global population will finally peak at around 10.4 billion by the 2080s.