According to a UN estimation released on Monday, India will become the world’s most populous country by the end of April, surpassing China, which has held the title for a long time. “China is soon to give up the top spot it has held for so long as the most populous country in the world,” a statement from the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DAES) in New York said. By the end of April, India will have 1,425,775,850 inhabitants, “matching and surpassing the population of mainland China,” it added. A UNFPA report on April 19 estimated that India’s population would reach 1.4286 billion by the end of this year, compared to China’s 1.4257 billion.
China’s population peaked at 1.426 billion in 2022 and began to decline, with projections indicating that its population size could fall below one billion by the end of the century, while India’s population will continue to grow for several decades, according to the DAES. The Chinese Department is led by Li Junhua. China’s official data released earlier this year showed that its population decreased last year for the first time since 1960–1961, when a famine that began in 1959 killed tens of millions of people as a result of Mao Zedong’s economic policy of the “Great Leap Forward.” Ironically, this decline in China’s population occurred despite the relaxation of the one-child policy in 2021. The cost of living and years of the one-child policy, along with education and women’s entry into the workforce, which have delayed motherhood, are among the causes of low birth rates.
India has had no official data on the number of its inhabitants since the last census in 2011. The new census, which takes place once every ten years, was scheduled for 2021 but was delayed due to the pandemic. Detractors of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationalist government accuse it of deliberately delaying it to avoid having to disclose sensitive data such as unemployment before next year’s national elections. The Indian economy struggles to create jobs for the millions of young people who enter the labor market each year. Half of the population of the Asian giant is under 30 years old.