India will still become the world’s most populous country next year, according to the UN estimates. As the global population reaches eight billion, India, formerly a powerful driver of the number of people on the planet, is experiencing a marked slowdown, according to official estimates.
Falling fertility rates in the South Asian country have forced at least one state to consider reviewing policies that encouraged families not to go beyond having two children.
The world’s population is estimated by the United Nations to have hit eight billion on Tuesday, with China and India accounting for more than a third of the total. India estimates its population at 1.38 billion, slightly lower than the 1.4 billion the World Bank estimates for China. India will become the most populous country in 2023, according to the UN. But India’s annual population growth has averaged 1.2 percent since 2011, compared with 1.7 percent in the 10 years previously, government figures show.
Further slowing can be expected. India’s total fertility rate (TFR) – children per woman – fell to two in the latest assessment period, for 2019-2021, from 3.4 in 1992-93, according to a government report issued last month.
It is estimated that the average must be 2.1 for the population to reproduce itself.
Increasing use of contraceptives and rising education among girls could have contributed to the decline in fertility rates, the government says. The use of family-planning methods jumped to 66.7 percent in 2019-21 from 53.5 percent in 2015-16.
That indicated that India’s national population policies and health systems were working, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said in comments shared with the Reuters news agency. “As India invests in its younger people, it needs to make plans for a demographic transition to take better care of a greater proportion of older people in the future,” the UNFPA said.
Source: aljazeera.com
Friday, April 24, 2026
