India is on track to overtake China by 2023, according to UN projections, with an expected population of over 1.4 billion people.
China’s population is expected to decline next year, seeing its population shrink for the first time in decades. China has one of the lowest birth rates in the world at 1.15 per woman, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. After decades of pushing down birthrates via the infamous ‘one-child policy’, China has begun to reverse course as it stares down the demographic crises of an aging population and a severe sex imbalance; it abandoned its ‘one-child policy’ in 2016 and is now pursuing a ‘three-child policy’ with tax incentives for couples to have more children. In spite of this, birthrates have continued to drop precipitously, with the 1.15 children per woman in 2021 down from 1.3 in 2020.
China is the only country facing a shrinking population; the UN report estimates that by 2050 61 countries will experience at least 1% population decline by 2050; fertility rates are falling around the world, and much of the developed world is already below replacement rate. The global population is expected to peak at 10.4 billion some time in the 2080s, with some models suggesting that it could peak even sooner. While concern about overpopulation was widespread during the unprecedented boom of the 20th century, prominent voices are now suggesting that underpopulation might be the greater long term issue.
“I think one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birthrate and the rapidly declining birthrate,” Elon Musk argued at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit last year. “And yet, so many people, including smart people, think that there are too many people in the world and think that the population is growing out of control. It’s completely the opposite. Please look at the numbers — if people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble, mark my words.”
According to the Associated Press “The U.S. birth rate fell 4% last year, the largest single-year decrease in nearly 50 years,” with the drop noted in “every major race and ethnicity, and in nearly every age group, falling to the lowest point since federal health officials started tracking it more than a century ago.”
The sharp decline in birth rates in China and the United States during the COVID pandemic suggests that lockdowns and public health restrictions played an outsized role in accelerating declining fertility rates, although it is presently unclear if the trend will slow or reverse as these countries reopen.
Over half of the projected population growth in the next 30 years is expected to occur in eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania. The rate of growth is expected to slow as fertility rates in these countries decline.
Infant mortality rates continue to decline and increases in the advancement and availability of medical technology are allowing a greater share of children to live to adulthood and extending the global life expectancy approximately 77.2 years by 2050. The global population is also expected to reach the 8 billion milestone in November of this year.