India is set to overtake China as the world’s most populous country by mid-year, according to the UN, marking a historic shift for the two Asian rivals.
According to the UN Population Fund’s World Population Dashboard released on Wednesday, India’s growing population will top 1.428 billion by mid-2023, just above China’s more than 1.425 billion people, where fertility rates are falling.
Population growth is a politically sensitive issue in China and India, and both governments reacted cautiously to the demographic milestone.
“Let me tell you that population dividends depend not only on quantity but also on quality,” Wang Wenbin, spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said on Wednesday. “Our population dividend has not disappeared, our dividend is forming and the development push is strong.”
The spokesman for the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs initially did not comment.
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The exact date of the transition is not known with certainty as the population data are based on estimates. The UN had already indicated in general terms that India’s people were on their way to overtaking China.
China’s population fell in 2022 for the first time in 60 years as the number of deaths exceeded births and the total workforce remained at 1.41 billion, according to Beijing’s calculations.
The country’s birth rate has been in long-term decline, partly due to the one-child policy, the 1980 measure that limited the number of children in a family to below the average of 2.1 required for a country’s stable population – the so-called replacement rate.
Authorities have eased this policy, but the number of births in China has continued to fall.
Peng Xizhe, a professor of population and development at Fudan University, said the turning point between the two countries is a little earlier than Chinese demographers’ initial projections around 2025.
Peng added that greater opportunities for China’s younger people, particularly in higher education, “has resulted in later marriage and childbearing and a relatively higher proportion of the population choosing to remain single.”
A UN official said India’s population growth rate peaked in the 1980s at 2.4 percent and dropped to 1 percent by 2020
However, the overall population of India continues to grow due to higher fertility rates in the remaining five states. Experts predict it will peak sometime around the middle of this century.
“India will face a situation of population dynamics in the next two to three decades before the overall population starts to decline,” said Andrea Wojnar, the Indian representative to UNFPA, the UN agency on sexual and reproductive health.
She added that official population projections, based on baseline data from the country’s last national census in 2011, provide a “good approximation of the total population and its age-sex structure.”
Some analysts have predicted that population growth could pay off for India if the country manages to harness the talents and skills of a growing and relatively young workforce.
Rory Green, China chief economist at research firm TS Lombard, said the UN announcement “complements the ‘China slowing and India rising’ narrative, which is important for investors when deciding their emerging markets allocation.”
However, he added that China’s economy is still much larger than India’s, despite the changing demographics.
If China stops growing this year and India’s economy expands by 10 percent annually, he calculates that it would take almost two decades for it to catch up.
Looking to benefit from the realignment of supply chains away from China, India overtook Britain as the world’s fifth largest economy last year.
However, it lags behind China in foreign direct investment and domestic investment in infrastructure, and is struggling to create enough jobs for the millions of young people who enter the labor market each year.
Unemployment has risen this year despite the country’s status as the world’s fastest-growing major economy, posing a challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government as it prepares to seek a third term in next year’s elections.
“India needs to capitalize on the demographic dividend window currently available, but will not be able to if the pace of investment is slow,” said Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the Population Foundation of India. “That means India needs to work faster and invest in people – especially young people.”