India projected to surpass China's population in 2023, says UN report

The global population could grow by around 8.5 million by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050 and 10.4 billion by 2100, the latest UN projections stated

India will outrace China as the most populous nation by 2023, said a UN report that projected the world will have eight billion people by November 2022. 

The global population could grow by around 8.5 million by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050 and 10.4 billion by 2100, said the report, adding that the world's population is growing at its slowest pace since 1950.

In 2022, the world's two most populous regions were in Asia with 29 per cent of the global population (2.3 billion people) in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia (2.1 billion) and 26 per cent in Central and Southern Asia. China and India, with more than 1.4 billion people each, were the most populous in the world, said the UN report released on World Population Day on Thursday. 

The UN stated that over half of the projected increase in global population by 2050 will be concentrated in eight nations, namely the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania.

The population growth of Australia and New Zealand, Northern Africa and Western Asia, and Oceania through the end of the century are expected to experience slower but still positive, the UN said. The report added, that populations of Eastern and SouthEastern Asia, Central and Southern Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe and Northern America will reach their peak size and then will start to decline before 2100. 

The UN, detailing the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on population and other factors, said that the global life expectancy at birth in 2021 fell to 71.0 years, down from 72.8 in 2019. 

In Central and Southern Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean, life expectancy at birth fell by almost three years between 2019 and 2021, while the combined population of Australia and New Zealand gained 1.2 years due to mortality rates during the pandemic, the report stated. 

High-income nations saw a population growth of 80.5 million due to international migration between 2000 and 2020. This exceeded the balance of births over deaths at 66.2 million. A total of 40 nations or areas saw a net inflow of 200,000 migrants each between 2010 and 2021. 

The world agency added that migration will be the sole driver of the population in high-income nations over the next few decades and because of this, population increase in low-income and lower-middle-income countries will continue to be driven by an excess of births over deaths.