India’s population 1.45bn, to double China’s in 2085
By 2100, India’s population of around 1.5 billion will be over twice that of China’s 633 million, highlighting the huge demographic dividend available to the country, according to estimates released by the United Nations on Thursday. India will hit an inflection point in 2085 when its population (1.61 billion) will be double of China’s (806 million), and the gap will only widen in the next few years, said the report.
India and China will be followed in the population rankings in 2100 by Pakistan (511 million), Nigeria (477 million), Democratic Republic of the Congo (431 million), and the US (421 million), with the last being one of the 62 countries in the world where immigration rather than excess of births over deaths or increase in life expectancy is expected to be the major driver of population growth, according to the biennial World Population Prospects (WPP), released by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) Population Division. The US’s current population is 345 million.
The report puts India’s current population at 1.451 billion, nine million more than what this number was believed to be two years ago. Although in the realm of projection, these are the most authoritative estimates of India’s population due to the absence of a decadal census after 2011. The 2021 census has been postponed indefinitely, first because of the pandemic, and then for reasons never really disclosed.
The marginal upward revision in India’s population, unlike what demographic alarmists and scaremongers like to claim, is not a sign of an imminent population explosion. While India is expected to be the most populous country in the world throughout this century, the latest WPP projections do not see any major change in India’s larger demographic tran
A shift in employment into construction, services and manufacturing can boost India’s GDP growth by as much as 0.2 to 0.5 percentage points, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said.
In a new report titled Advancing India’s Structural Transformation and Catch-up to the Technology Frontier, the IMF said the country needs to create 143-324 million jobs by 2050 to enable its workers to shift towards more dynamic sectors and thus boost its economic growth.
The report said structural reforms can also help India create high-quality jobs and accelerate growth.
“India’s structural transformation still has some way to go. While the role of agriculture in terms of aggregate output has declined in India from over 40% in 1980 to 15% in 2019, it remains large in terms of employment, accounting for 42% of workers in 2019,” the report said.
“This has resulted in depressed labour productivity in the sector. In its place, economic activity in India has shifted over time mainly to services. Construction has also become an important employer, but as in agriculture, productivity in the sector is low and has not increased much since 1980,” it added.
Recently, Citigroup Inc. said India will struggle to create enough jobs for its growing workforce over the next decade even if the economy grows at a rapid pace of 7%, suggesting the country will need more concerted efforts to boost employment and skills.
Citi estimates India will need to create about 12 million jobs a year over the next decade to absorb the number of new entrants to the labour market because, based on a growth rate of 7%, India can only generate 8-9 million jobs a year.
However, in a rebuttal, the ministry of labour & employment said the report failed to account for the “comprehensive and positive employment data”.