India likely to take over from China as the world's most populated country
The population of India will overtake that of China before 2030, five years earlier than expected, a new United Nations population report predicts.
According to the UN's latest “World Population Prospects”, released yesterday in New York, there will be 1,395m people in India in 2025, and 1,593m in 2050. In China the population will grow to 1,441m by 2025, before dropping to 1,392m in 2050. Cheryl Sawyer, a UN demographer, said: “We've been saying for a while that India would cross over China before 2050. But the crossover has been getting earlier and earlier and we now say it will happen before 2030 (not including Hong Kong). This is five years earlier than we said two years ago.
“Based on analysis of the newest censuses, we're estimating lower fertility for China, while India's is slightly higher than we estimated in the past.”
In 2050, the world's population is expected to be 9.1bn people, up from 6.5bn now, with almost all the growth in developing countries. The numbers vary significantly according to differing scenarios and become less certain the further they project into the future. Demographic shifts depend on fertility, mortality and migration, which can be influenced by policy and social and economic trends.
The UN's population division said it did not doubt that India and China would exchange places, mainly because of differences in fertility. The only question was exactly when. China now has a fertility rate of 1.7 children per woman (though rising to 1.85), while India's is just above three.
Thomas Buettner, the chief of the UN division's estimates and projection section, said China's changing population was due to “modernisation and uprooting people from traditional lifestyles into the modern economy”, where “people have other opportunities that compete with having large families, like consumerism, travel and education.”
He said it was also due to a rigid population policy, although Chinese officials had started thinking about relaxing that policy because of concern about rapid ageing of the population. Europe's population, which recently underwent a reversal in growth, is also on a downward trend. According to a medium variant, it will drop from 728m now to 653m in 2050. That figure (which incorporates Russia but not Turkey) includes falls in Italy and Germany, although France and the UK will grow.
Japan's population declines from 128m to 112m, according to the same variant. “The population of developed countries as a whole is expected to remain virtually unchanged between 2005 and 2050, at about 1.2bn,” the report says. “In contrast, the population of the 50 least-developed countries is projected to more than double.” Politics tending to pragmatic, Page 11
2030年：印度人口可能超过中国
一份新的联合国人口报告预测说，印度人口2030年前将超过中国，比原来的预期时间提前5年。
联合国昨天在纽约发表了最新的《世界人口展望》(World Population Prospects)。据该展望报告，2025年印度将有13.95亿人口，2050年达15.93亿。到2025年，中国人口将增至14.41亿，2050年跌至13.92亿。联合国人口统计学家谢丽尔?索耶(Cheryl Sawyer)说：“我们一段时间以来一直在说，印度人口将在2050年前超过中国。但这一时间已越来越早，我们现在说，那将在2030年前发生(不包括香港人口在内)。这比我们两年前所说的时间提前了5年。”
“基于对最新人口普查的分析，我们估计中国的人口出生率下降了，而印度略高于我们过去的估计。”
2050年，全世界人口预计将从目前的65亿增至91亿，所有的人口增长几乎都来自发展中国家。不同的预测出来的数字差异很大，预测未来的时间越远，这个数字就变得更为不确定。人口变化取决于出生率、死亡率和移民，这些可能受到政策、社会和经济趋势的影响。
联合国的人口机构表示，它确信印度和中国将交换位置，主要原因是双方人口出生率上的差异。唯一的问题是确切的时间。目前中国每位妇女的人口生育率是1.7(虽然正升至1.85)，而印度的数字略高于3。
联合国人口机构估算和预测负责人托马斯?巴特纳(Thomas Buettner)说，中国人口的变化是由于“现代化，以及抛弃传统生活方式，举家进入现代经济”。在现代经济生活中，“人们不用选择生育大量子女，他们有很多其它机会，例如消费、旅行和教育。”
他表示，另一个原因是中国严格的人口政策，尽管出于对人口的迅速老龄化感到忧虑，中国官员此前已开始考虑放松这一政策。
另外，最近欧洲人口数量也处于下降趋势。日本人口也经历了类似走势，从1.28亿减少到了1.12亿。
