India Beats China to Become World's Most Populous Country

VIVA – Population in India has reached 1.425.775.850 people, it beats China to become the world's most populous country, the United Nations stated on Monday. 

India's decennial census, originally scheduled to be held in 2021, has been postponed until now, leaving no official population data. Meanwhile, China's latest census was conducted in 2020.

To predicts the population of India and China, United Nations depends on information about fertility trend, deaths, and migration obtained from records, surveys, and administrative data. To be clear, India and China each have more than 1.4 billion people, and for more than 70 years have made up more than a third of the global population. 

China's population is likely to start decreasing in the next year. As information, last year, 10.6 million people were born, slightly more than died because of a decline in fertility rates. According to the United Nations, China's population will continue to fall and could drop to below one billion before the end of the century. 

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Ilustrasi populasi warga China.

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• The Irish Time

India's fertility rate has also fallen substantially in recent decades, from 5.7 births per woman in 1950 to two births per woman today, but the rate of decline is slower. 

Also, India's population will almost certainly continue to grow for decades, the UN estimates the population will peak around 2064, and then decline gradually.

UN demographers stated much of this was achieved by ignoring human rights, two separate campaigns promoting only one child, and then subsequent marriages, longer distances between children and fewer of them, in a country that is largely rural and highly uneducated and poor. 

Investments in public health and improved education for women and their participation in the labor force, among others, have also contributed to the decline in fertility.

India's population more than tripled in the six decades after independence, from 361 million people in 1951 to more than 1.2 billion in 2011.

India saw rapid population growth, nearly 2% per year, for most of the second half of the last century. Over time, mortality rates fell, life expectancy increased and incomes rose. 

More people, especially those living in cities, accessed clean drinking water and modern sewerage, "But birth rates remained high," says Tim Dyson, a demographer at the London School of Economics.

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UN demographers stated much of this was achieved by ignoring human rights, two separate campaigns promoting only one child, and then subsequent marriages, longer distances between children and fewer of them, in a country that is largely rural and highly uneducated and poor.