World Population Day 2024: Who Leads In India Vs China Race?

Today is World Population Day. The global population has seen a massive increase in recent centuries. Initially, it took hundreds of thousands of years for the human population to reach 1 billion. However, within just 200 years, the population expanded to seven times that number. By 2011, the world's population had reached 7 billion.

According to projections by the United Nations, the global population is expected to grow to approximately 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050, and 10.9 billion by 2100.

This rapid growth is primarily driven by several factors, including increased life expectancy, changes in fertility rates, urbanisation, and migration. These factors are expected to have widespread implications for future generations, affecting economic development, employment, income distribution, poverty, and social welfare.

In a notable demographic shift, India overtook China as the world's most populous country in 2023, according to the UNFPA's State of the World Population Report.

Let's have a look at the top 10 populous countries in the world, as of 2024:

1. India - 1,441,719,852
2. China - 1,425,178,782
3. USA - 341,814,420
4. Indonesia - 279,798,049
5. Pakistan - 245,209,815
6. Nigeria - 229,152,217
7. Brazil - 217,637,297
8. Bangladesh - 174,701,211
9. Russia - 143,957,079
10. Ethiopia - 129,719,719

India's population was estimated at 142.86 crores (1.4286 billion), marginally ahead of China. This shift was due to 11.1 million deaths and 9 million births in China, marking the second consecutive year of population decline for the country, reported Indian Express.

The UNFPA report also suggests that if India's population continues to grow at its current rate of just under one percent annually, it will double from its current value in the next 75 years.

Experts attribute India's large population to "population momentum" from earlier decades and predict that the country's population is likely to start declining closer to 2050.

This trend is expected to apply to the global population as well, which is currently slightly above 8 billion. However, both India's and the world's populations are expected to stabilise long before reaching such high numbers.

Recognising these growth trends, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) highlighted the urgency of global population issues by establishing the Day of the Five Billion in 1987, which has been observed as World Population Day on July 11th annually since 1990.

World Population Day serves as a platform to raise awareness and address crucial population-related challenges, highlighting the importance of family planning, gender equality, maternal health, reproductive and human rights.

This year's World Population Day will stress on the theme "Investing in data collection is important to understanding problems, tailoring solutions, and driving progress."

This day aims to raise awareness and understanding of global population issues, including demographic trends, growth projections, and their impact on sustainable development.

As of 2024, the global human population surpassed 8.0 billion in mid-November 2022, marking a significant increase from an estimated 2.5 billion people in 1950. This growth includes an additional 1 billion people since 2010 and 2 billion since 1998, according to the UN.

China and India remain the most populated countries, each with over 1 billion people, together constituting nearly 36% of the global population.

The UN predicts that the world's population will continue to rise, reaching 9.7 billion in 2050 and potentially peaking at nearly 10.4 billion in the mid-2080s. This shows an increase of almost 2 billion individuals within the next 30 years.