A census or population count is never an easy task, but the UN says its latest calculations show that by the end of this weekend there will be more people in India than in China, marking a sea change in global demographics, reports CNN.

Most of the world’s people were born or raised while China held the title of the world’s most populous country, but decades of restrictive policies that limited families to one child dramatically slowed the birth rate, allowing India to slowly take over. although this is not necessarily what most countries desire.

A few years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed concern about India’s “population explosion” and praised families who believed the increase in the number of children would affect them and the nation.

• India, which will soon become the most populous country in the world, does not know how many people it has

How India managed to achieve the title of the most populous country in the world

CNN analyzed data from the UN’s World Population Projections and spoke to experts to explore the details of India’s demographic changes.

India is expected to reach 1.42 billion people this year, overtaking China for the first time since the United Nations began keeping population records in 1950.

Not surprisingly, birth rates are the key to understanding what causes a country’s population to grow or shrink. It is generally accepted that a country’s average fertility rate (children per woman) needs to be 2.1 for the population to be sustained, and even higher to grow.

In the 1960s, when today’s grandparents were having children, India’s birth rate was 6, about the same as some African countries are today.

But India’s total fertility rate fell to 2.0 in the latest national estimate period from 2019 to 2021, down from 3.4 in 1992-93, according to government data. Population growth, despite declining birth rates, can be explained by “demographic chronology”, that is, the tendency of a growing population to continue growing after birth rates decline due to their age distribution.

“When the birth rate falls, the population continues to grow for several decades. And that’s because the younger and older cohorts are still growing up to the age when they become parents,” said Frank Sviachny, a senior fellow at the Federal Population Research Institute.

Consequently, India’s population will continue to grow slowly due to the large number of women entering reproductive age.

When India’s population will stop growing and which country could become the new most populous country

India may have overtaken China in terms of population, but UN figures also show that its growth rate has slowed.

From 1971 to 1981, India’s population grew by an average of 2.2% annually. From 2001 to 2011, it fell to 1.5%, and is now even lower. According to UN forecasts, India’s population will reach a peak of 1.7 billion in 2064.

Currently, more than 40 percent of the country’s residents are under 25, and the median age is expected to reach 28 in 2023 — nearly a decade lower than China’s — according to the United Nations.

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), India’s working-age population exceeded 900 million in 2021 and is expected to reach 1 billion in the next decade.

India’s population growth will cease to be the highest in the world in the last 25 years.

India is the world’s largest contributor to global growth in the working-age population, accounting for 23% of growth between 2020 and 2025. But in a quarter of a century, it is predicted that everything will change – India will account for only 2.5% of global growth. the growth of the working-age population, while sub-Saharan countries such as Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo will be among the fastest growing contributors.