India is set to become the world’s most populous country next year, overtaking China with its 1.4bn people, according to figures from the United Nations (UN).

According to the UN, by this November 2022, the planet will be home to about 8bn people, but population growth is not as rapid as it used to be, adding that it is now at its slowest rate since 1950, and is set to peak. The UN said the planet, by the 2080s, will see a growth of about 10.4bn although some demographers believe that could happen even sooner.

But the population of the world is expanding unevenly. The findings by the UN also disclosed that more than half the growth the world will see in the next 30 years, is expected to happen in just eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania.

Further revelations of the UN Report

At the same time, some of the world’s most developed economies are already seeing population decline as fertility rates fall below 2.1 children per woman, which is known as the “replacement rate”. In 61 countries, the report revealed that populations will decline by at least 1% by 2050.

With one of the lowest fertility rates in the world (which is at 1.15 children per woman), China announced that its population is due to start declining next year (2023), a period much earlier than previously anticipated. That is despite the country abandoning its one-child policy in 2016 and introducing incentives for couples to have two or more children. As India’s population continued to grow, it will almost certainly overtake China as the country with the biggest population in the world.

Report suggest that fertility rates are falling globally, even in many of the countries where the population is expanding. That is because, as previous generations expand, there are more people having children, even if individually, those people are having fewer children than their parents did.

Growth is also largely, thanks to developments in medicine and science which means that more children are surviving into adulthood and more adults into old age. That pattern is likely to continue, which means that by 2050, the global average life expectancy will be around 77.2 years. But this pattern means that the share of the global population aged 65 years or above is projected to rise from 10% this year to 16% in 2050. Again, the distribution will be unequal with some countries, especially in East Asia and Western Europe, which are already seeing more extremes in ageing.