China is not the country with the most people - India is the first now

If India's population continues to grow, it will double in the next 75 years

China has been breaking population records for some time. However, it seems to have recently changed places with India^[1]. It should be noted that China and India are the most populous countries, with more than 1 billion people, representing almost 18% of the world's population.

Despite being roughly three times smaller than China, India has roughly 4 times the population of, say, the USA, although it is similar in size to the latter. Europe is the same size as China but has twice as many people. The assumption is that these changes are due to the rising Chinese standard of living, which means that more and more effort and time is needed to afford the essentials (washing machine, dishwasher, car, etc.). In contrast, in India, some people still live without amenities.

Although China's figure has led to 11.1 million deaths and 9 million births, the one-child policy may have also influenced it, an official program initiated by the Chinese central government in the late 1960s and early 1970s to limit the number of families in the majority of the country to one child^[2]. This was ostensibly aimed at reducing the growth of China's huge population. However, at the end of 2015, it was announced that the program would end at the beginning of 2016.

The 2020 census, highlighting China's looming demographic and economic crisis, fuelled by a low birth rate, an ageing population and a shrinking workforce, allowed married couples to have a maximum of three children in May 2021, a law officially adopted in August 2021.

The world population is projected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050

The world population is projected to continue to grow, reaching 9.7 billion in 2050 and could reach almost 10.4 billion by the mid-1980s. This means that the human population will increase by almost 2 billion over the next 30 years. While it was expected to take hundreds of thousands of years to reach 1 billion people, in just 200 years, the population has grown to seven times that number.

Factors primarily driven by longer life expectancy, changes in fertility, urbanization, and migration will have wide-ranging impacts on future generations, affecting economic development, employment, income distribution, poverty, and social well-being. However, India's and the world's populations is expected to stabilize well before 2050^[3].

Global life expectancy has increased again to 73.3 years

Just last year, India became one of only four countries to land a spacecraft on the Moon^[4] successfully. But the country is also famous for something else.

According to the UN's World Population Prospects Report, India's population is likely to peak at 1.701 billion in 2062 (the country is still 38 years away from its peak). In that year, India's population is expected to increase by 222 000 people. Pakistan, for its part, is likely to become the third most populous country by 2054, overtaking the United States, with India and China retaining their first and second place positions until that year^[5].

Overall, global life expectancy increased to 73.3 years in 2024, up from 70.9 years during the pandemic. 

It is stressed that women are now having on average one fewer child compared to 1990. In more than half of all countries and regions, the average fertility rate per woman is now less than 2.1. Meanwhile, about one-fifth of all countries and regions, including China, Italy, South Korea and Spain, have extremely low fertility rates, with 1.4 children per woman per lifetime.