India has overtaken China as the world’s most populous nation according to the United Nation’s data published on Wednesday.
According to Bloomberg, India’s population stands at 1.4286 billion as against China’s 1.4257 billion people, according to mid-2023 estimates by the UN’s World Population dashboard.
China’s figures do not include Hong Kong and Macau, Special Administrative Regions of China, and Taiwan, as shown by data.
This is the first time that India has topped the UN list of most populous countries since it started collecting population data in 1950.
China is facing a looming demographic decline as birth rates plunge and its workforce ages.
Several regions have also announced plans to boost birth rates — but official efforts have so far failed to reverse the decline.
According to NDTV, India has no recent official data on how many people it has because it has not conducted a census since 2011.
Nearly one-quarter of India’s population is under the age of 14, according to UN data, as 68 per cent of the population is in the 15 to 64 age group, while 7 per cent is above the age of 65.