India’s population has surpassed China’s. What’s next?

How did India’s population get so big and how long will it last?

Counting millions is never an easy task, but the United Nations says its latest calculations show that by the end of this weekend, India will have more people than China, marking an epochal shift in global demographics.

Most of the world grew up with China holding the title of the world’s most populous country, but decades of restrictive policies limiting families to one child have dramatically slowed China’s birth rate, allowing India to move ahead.

But having a number of top employees is not necessarily a title that most countries covet.

A few years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed concern about India’s “population explosion” and praised families who carefully considered the impact of more children – on themselves and the nation.

“In 21st century India, the ability to fulfill dreams starts with an individual, it starts with a family. If the population is not educated, it is not healthy, then neither the home nor the country can be happy,” said Modi.

CNN analyzed UN World Population Outlook data and spoke to experts to dig beneath the headlines for the details surrounding India’s demographic shift.

How did India become so big?

Not surprisingly, fertility is key to understanding what drives a country’s population growth or decline. It is commonly accepted that a country’s average fertility rate – children per woman – needs to be 2.1 for the population to sustain itself – and even more to grow.

In the 1960s, when today’s grandparents were having children, India’s fertility rate was 6, about the same rate as some African countries now.

But according to the government, India’s total fertility rate fell to 2.0 in the latest national assessment period from 2019 to 2021, down from 3.4 in 1992 to 1993. Population growth, despite a declines in the fertility rate can be explained by “demography”. impulse.”

“When the fertility rate drops, the population continues to grow for several decades. And that’s because the younger and older cohorts are still growing up to that age when they become parents,” said Frank Swiaczny, principal investigator at the Federal Institute for Population Research.

So even with a replacement or sub-replacement fertility rate, India’s population will continue to grow slowly due to the considerable number of women entering their reproductive years.

Unsurprisingly for a nation of its size, India’s fertility rate is uneven across the country, contributing to a north-south divide that sees more children being produced in the north. But even there, the figures are not off the charts.

“What really surprised us is that the highest fertility rate in India — 3.0 in Bihar — is not that high,” said Barbara Seligman, director of strategy and growth and senior vice president at PRB. a nonprofit group that focuses on demographics and population research.

“It’s really surprising to see how many states are below replacement,” Seligman added. All but five states – Bihar, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Manipur – are at this level and, notably, all are in the north.

For example, Goa has a fertility rate similar to certain southern European countries, which are currently struggling to support an aging population with a shrinking workforce. Experts say it’s a trend India’s leaders would be wise not to ignore.

According to the UN classification, India is now an “aging society”, meaning that 7% of its population is 65 years or older. In some states, for example Kerala in southern India, the over-65 population has doubled in the last 30 years and is now at 12%.

The same model will expand in several states, given the low rate of total fertility.

“We’re going to see more and more states in the next 30 years aging like Kerala is now,” Seligman said.

India’s population growth is slowing

India may have overtaken China in terms of total population, but UN data also shows that its growth rate has slowed.

Between 1971 and 1981, India’s population grew by an average of 2.2% each year. By 2001 to 2011, it had dropped to 1.5% and is even lower now. According to UN projections, India’s population is expected to peak at around 1.7 billion in 2064.

Currently, more than 40% of the country’s residents are under 25 years old, and the estimated average age in 2023 is 28 years – almost a decade younger than China’s – according to UN data.

In 2021, India’s working-age population was over 900 million and is expected to reach 1 billion in the next decade, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Not only is this massive – and relatively low-paid – workforce young, it is largely English-speaking, digitally literate and has a reputation for entrepreneurship, making the country a big draw for Western companies looking for a hub. alternative production in China.

But India’s share of the world’s working-age population is expected to slow over the coming decades, giving way to a younger population of workers coming out of Africa.

India may have the largest portion of its working-age population today, but experts say the nation needs strong policies to harness its youth.

“A large number of people is not enough, we have to come up with a holistic plan,” Sonalde Desai, director of the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and professor at the University of Maryland, told CNN.

“We need people who have the skills to fill some of the high-value jobs and an economy that produces those high-value jobs.”

Poonam Muttreja, chief executive of the Population Foundation of India, said that addressing the gap is “imperative for India to progress towards fulfilling its aspirations of being a developed country”.

What’s next for India?

Although it remains one of the world’s poorest countries per capita, India is rising in the global economic rankings – its nearly $3.5 trillion economy is now the world’s fifth largest and among the fastest growing.

In 2023, the World Bank expects India to outpace all other major economies, with growth of 6.6 percent—compared to 4.3 percent for China and just 0.5 percent for the United States, while in some forecasts , is expected to rank 3rd in 2023. the next 10 years and become only the third country with a GDP of $10 trillion by 2035.

However, despite its fortunes, India’s wealth is not evenly distributed

Poverty remains a daily reality for millions of Indians, and experts say that while the country has a large population of young people ready and willing to work compared to other countries, the numbers show that there are not enough jobs for them.

The problem is worse in the economically disadvantaged regions of the north, which rely heavily on agriculture. Uttar Pradesh, for example, is home to 17% of India’s population, but has only 9% of industrial employment.

Sabina Dewan, senior visiting researcher at the Center for Policy Research, says population growth can be a “tremendous productive force for the economy”, but economic growth “depends on the provision of good quality, productive and well-paid jobs”. .

And that starts with investing more in education beyond primary school, especially for women.

“We need to strengthen our secondary school system, make it safer and closer to where the girls are, because many parents do not send their daughters to secondary schools, which are far away, because of security concerns,” said Muttreja .

Once they leave school, the labor force participation rate for women – the estimate of the active labor force and people looking for work – was just 19% in 2021, World Bank data shows. This is less than half the overall labor force participation rate of 46%, already one of the lowest in Asia. The comparative rates for China and the United States were 68% and 61%.

Not only does India need better policies to get women into work, it needs to make sure they can stay there, Desai said. For that, more options for temporary contraception are needed to give women more control over birth, she said.

Education is the best contraceptive pill that can be given to a woman, added Muttreja.

Dewan, of the Center for Policy Research, said that if India does not get the balance right, it risks squandering the considerable advantage of being the world’s most populous country with the world’s largest share of working-age human capital.

“The challenge of education, training provision and sufficient quality jobs is huge,” she said.

“If we don’t create enough good jobs, we are wasting the extraordinary potential of our workers. And we could be looking at a youth population that has higher aspirations than ever before, but few opportunities to generate income.”