shrinking population
China no longer the most populous country in the world
By Kai Stoppel
04/13/2023, 7:41 p.m
For a long time, China was undisputedly the country with the most inhabitants. But according to a UN prediction, it will now lose that title. Because China’s population is shrinking – the competitor for first place, however, continues to grow. But how long?
China has long been one of the world’s most populous regions. This is attributed to the vast areas of fertile soil and the climate favorable for agriculture. There have also been long phases of political stability in the past centuries, and the population has been spared bloody wars. However, the same applies to India.
From the 1950s, with the improvement in medicine and agriculture, all dams broke: China and India grew into mega-populations. China passed the 1 billion mark in the 1980s, followed by India in the late 1990s. Today, just over 1.4 billion people live in both countries – more than in Europe, North and South America combined.
While China has long been the most populous country, a change in leadership is now imminent: According to UN forecasts, India will overtake China on April 14th. However, according to demographers, this exact date should be treated with caution: “It’s a rough approximation, the best estimate,” Patrick Gerland, head of the UN’s population forecasts department, told the AP news agency.
Obsolete earlier than expected
In fact, pundits had long expected that India would not overtake China until later this decade. The fact that the time has come by 2023 is due to the continued decline in the fertility rate in China, i.e. the average number of children per woman. This was 1.2 in the People’s Republic, making it one of the lowest in the world.
But in India, too, the fertility rate has fallen rapidly in recent years, most recently it was 2 children per woman. In the 1950s it was still 6, in the 1990s it was just a little over 3. Now, for the first time, the important mark of 2.1 has been undershot, from which point a population inevitably shrinks. So there can no longer be any talk of a population explosion in India. Nevertheless, India’s population should continue to grow for the time being. According to the UN’s median estimate, the country might surpass the 1.5 billion mark by the end of the decade.
Population explosion stopped in India
But why does India keep growing when the fertility rate is below 2.1? This is due to the special age structure: more than 40 percent of the population is under 25 years old. Many women are now of childbearing age. If each of 300 million has an average of 2 children, 600 million children will be born. At the same time, just under 100 million Indians are older than 65 years. So there can’t be as many people dying as new ones are born.
However, further development in India is accompanied by many imponderables: In addition to the fertility rate, life expectancy also plays a role, both factors that change unpredictably. The UN forecasts therefore differ significantly at the edges: the maximum estimate for India is more than 2 billion people in the year 2100, the minimum estimate around 1 billion, i.e. less than today.
China is already shrinking
For China, the forecast range for 2100 is between 1.2 billion and 490 million inhabitants. The country is likely to have already passed the peak of its population at a good 1.4 billion: At the beginning of the year, the statistics office in Beijing reported the first population decline in six decades. And the median age, with exactly half the population younger and half older, is 39 in China, which is similar to a developed country like the United States. In India, the median is 28 years, more on the level of emerging countries such as Mexico or South Africa.
And the population in China is aging rapidly: The country now has the largest number of older people in the world. In 2010, 254 million Chinese were over 60 years old. Their number is expected to increase to around 400 million by 2040, which would then be more than a quarter of the population. In India, the proportion of older people is likely to be significantly lower for longer.
These developments have implications for the two super-nations: In India, a growing labor force might also fuel growth in economic activity. In China, on the other hand, there are fewer and fewer working-age adults to support an aging population. As a result, economic dynamics might diverge further, which ultimately should also play a role in power and influence in the region. Perhaps the fact that India is overtaking China in terms of population is more than just statistical fun fact.