India will be world’s most populous country by 2022, UN projects

The world’s population will reach 9.7 billion by 2050 as India becomes the largest country, the United Nations has reported.

India will overtake China as the world’s most populous country with its population touching 1.5 bn in 2030.

“The concentration of growth in the poorest countries will make it harder to eradicate poverty, combat hunger and expand schooling and health systems”.

Consequently, the population of Nigeria is projected to surpass that of the United States by about 2050, at which point it would become the third largest country in the world.

United Nation:India in 2022 will be the world’s most populous country, finally overtaking China, with about 1.4 billion residents. In Africa, children under 15 account for two fifths of the population. (Some demographers believe the world population will peak as soon as the 2050s, but that’s still a fairly controversial position.).

The report explained that a minor list of high-fertility nations is to be held responsible for the majority of the predicted elevation in the global population.

Most startling is the increasing population of Africa, which is expected to jump from 1.1bn today to 4.3bn in 2100.

In terms of growth, that’s actually a slowdown, given that the world added 1 billion people since 2003 and 2 billion since 1990, according to the report. “We anticipate that substantial levels of global migration will continue in the future and that migration will continue to be the leading force of population change for some countries in future decades”.

“Continued population growth until 2050 is nearly inevitable, even if the decline of fertility accelerates”, says the report, World Population Prospects: the 2015 revision.

A significant ageing of the population in the next several decades is projected for most regions of the world, starting with Europe where 34 per cent of the population is projected to be over 60 years old by 2050.

The Philippine population is expected to grow at a rate of 1.45% from 2015 to 2030, rising to 123.6 million in 2030, and consequently to 148.3 million in 2050 and almost 169 million in 2100.

Population growth has slowed in recent years, with an annual increase of 1.18 per cent in 2015 compared with 1.24 per cent ten years ago.

The remainder live in “high-fertility” countries, where fertility declines have been only limited and where the average woman has five or more children over her lifetime. By 2100 there will be 82.3 million living in Britain. The rise is more than double that of the rest of the world.

The new projection has India overtaking China’s population six years earlier than previously predicted.