By the summer India, the world’s largest democracy, will have overtaken mainland China as the world’s most populous country, according to the United Nations Population Fund. On the calculations of another arm of the UN, this may already have just happened. India’s growing population is surpassing 1.428 billion, just above the more than 1.425 billion people in China, where fertility rates, falling due to the now-abandoned “one-child policy”, mean deaths outstripped births for the first time in 60 years.
The last time China and India traded places in population, over three centuries ago, the Mughals ruled India and the Qing dynasty was expanding the borders of China; between them, perhaps the richest empires that had ever existed.
India’s population growth rate peaked at 2.4 per cent in the 1980s, dropping to 1 per cent by 2020. With 31 of its states recording growth at only the replacement rate (2.1 per cent) or less, overall population is still growing only because of higher fertility rates in the remaining five states.
But the country faces big challenges if it is to realise its “demographic dividend” – its huge young workforce is hobbled by education and health systems that remain far behind China and require massive investment to foster employability. Somehow the country must produce 90 million new jobs outside agriculture before 2030, just to keep unemployment from spiralling higher.
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Although the proportion living in extreme poverty has plummeted, most Indians remain poor and more than a third of children are malnourished. Only one in five Indian women are in the formal workforce, among the lowest rate anywhere.
China’s economy – roughly five times India’s – is still expected to remain bigger despite the demographic shifts, but the latter’s relative growth compared to China may yet begin to appeal to international investors. India, the fastest-growing major economy this year, overtook the UK last year to become the fifth largest economy in the world. But if Chinese growth stopped this year and India grew by a tenth yearly, it would still take close on two decades to catch up.