By the time the Winter Olympics comes to Beijing in 2022, China will have ceded its gold medal in the global population rankings to India, according to a new study from the UN.
With a population of 1.38 billion, China currently has around 65 million more people than India. The PRC's famous headcount is expected to remain relatively stable until the 2030s while India's is set to keep growing for several decades.
The new forecast revises a previous estimate that India wouldn't overtake China until 2028.
Although the global population is expected to continue ballooning – by 2050, there will be another 2.4 billion people on earth, raising the worldwide total to 9.7 billion – China will not be contributing to the global growth as its population will begin to decline in about 15 years.
Projected national populations in 2050
1. India – 1.7 billion
2. China – 1.3 billion
3. Nigeria – 399 million
4. USA – 389 million
5. Indonesia – 322 million
While the one-child policy, introduced in 1978 to control China's population growth, is a major contributor to the country's slowing birth rate, the number of children born per woman – has been declining since the 1960s when an average of 6.2 births were recorded for every Chinese woman.
That number has gone up slightly in the past few years as authorities have begun to relax the one-child policy. For instance, couples can have a second child if one parent is an only child. The one-child policy is expected to be replaced by a nationwide two-child policy sometime next year.
[Graphs via Scroll]
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