The global population, now at 7.3 billion, is predicted to hit 9.7 billion by 2050.
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India would retain its “demographic dividend” for the next 85 years and a steady rise in the population will make India surpass China by 2022 to become the world’s most populated nation, says a United Nations report.
Between 2015 and 2050, the report notes, nine nations are expected to account for more than half of the world’s projected growth: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania, the United States, Indonesia and Uganda.
Currently, the population of China is approximately 1.38 billion and that of India is 1.31 billion.
Concerns about the difficulties that will be caused by China’s aging society, 10 ministerial-level departments and the ministries of civil affairs and education have jointly released a circular last year calling for the country to step up its preparations.
Population growth in the future is highly dependent on the path of future fertility in humans, in regards to small changes in fertility can, that has been projected over decades, that generate large differences in total population.
A similar UN report two years ago had projected that the population of each of the two countries would reach 1.45 billion in 2028 when India’s would start to grow at a faster pace than China’s.
In recent years, fertility has declined in nearly all parts of the world, while life expectancy has increased significantly in the poorest countries, rising from 56 to 62 since the beginning of the century.
Many people have different perspectives on the pluses and minuses of such rapid population growth, but in many ways, it appears to at least partially be a representation of efforts to improve health and wellness worldwide. The current world population is 7.3 billion.
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“The concentration of population growth in the poorest countries presents its own set of challenges, making it more hard to eradicate poverty and inequality, to combat hunger and malnutrition, and to expand educational enrolment and health systems, all of which are crucial to the success of the new sustainable development agenda”, said John Wilmoth, Director of the UN’s Population Division. However, since the base was so large, the population increase was “significant”, amounting to around 18 million per decade or 2 million per year, Dr Ram said. Consequently, the population of Nigeria is projected to surpass that of the United States by about 2050, at which point it would become the third largest country in the world.
