India becomes most populous country in the world

20/04/2023

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India becomes most populous country in the world

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released its State of World Population (SOWP) report titled ‘8 Billion Lives, Infinite Possibilities’. Through this report United Nations declared that the population in the world had crossed 8 billion mark.

India has overtaken China and become the most populous country in the world as per report.

Highlights of the report:

The UNFPA reported that the population of the world is 8,045 million in which the largest share around 65% of people are aged between 15 and 64 years, followed by those in the 10-24 years group (24%) and 10 per cent of the population is above 65 years of age.
According to the UN’s 2022 report, the world’s two most populous regions are Eastern and South-Eastern Asia contains around 29% of the global population.
Central and Southern Asia is containing around 26 per cent.
The population in China and India are responsible for the largest populations in these regions, with more than 1.4 billion each in 2022.

Some projections in report:

It has been predicted that more than half of the projected increase might be centered in eight countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan and etc.

What is the outlook for population growth?

The 2023 report clearly indicates that even though numbers might continue to grow for several decades but as per the latest projections the rate of global population growth has fallen to less than 1% since 2020.
The main reason behind the fall of the rate of global population growth is declining the average number of births per woman.
The report released by UN said that even though the decline in the average number of births per woman is continuing, the total annual number of births has remained stable at around 140 million since the late 1980s.