India's population will peak at 1.7bn in 2060: UN study

India's population is projected to peak at 1.718 billion in 2060, after which it will decline. At its peak, India will be the most populous country there has ever been or probably ever will be.

According to population projections released by the United Nations on Tuesday, India's share in the world's population will peak in 2030 after which it will decline, and the growth in the world's population from then on will be fuelled by Africa.

China at its peak in 2025 will have 1.395 billion people. In fact, when China peaks, India will have already surpassed it in population.

India's population will begin to decline only in 2060, a full 35 years after China. By the turn of the century, India's population, though declining, will be almost double that of China.

The latest numbers come from the UN's 2010 revision of the World Population Prospects. The last revision was in 2008. The "medium variant" for 2010 – the population projections based on national trends, which is neither the best nor worst-case scenario – produces a world population in 2050 of 9.31 billion, that is 156 million larger than the 2008 revision.

At the turn of the century, the world will have 10.1 billion people. On October 31 this year, the world will have its seven billionth person.

India's population will peak in 2060 and decline thereafter but still be double that of China's by the turn of the century, projections released by the UN say.

The rise and ebb of India's demographic dividend is played out starkly in the new numbers. Today, India's median age is 25 years, which makes it younger than China, Africa, the developed world and the global average. As fertility drops and life expectancy increases, India will grow older than the world as we cross the middle of this century. By the end of the century, even the developed world will be younger than India, whose median age will have almost doubled.

In 2010, just under two-thirds of India's population was of working age, that is, between 15 and 60 years. In contrast, less than half the population of the developed world is in its working age group, 24-60 years. By the turn of the century, less than half of India's population will be working, the rest dependent on it. The developed world will be nearing a two-thirds dependent population.

Whether the current demographic composition pays its promised dividend will depend to a large extent
on improved access to higher education. According to an Asian Development Bank draft report released on Wednesday, enrolments in tertiary education in China (21%) and India (12%) are far below those in the developed world.

However, postgraduate enrollment in China has now surpassed levels in India, growing more than five-fold, from 70,000 in 1998 to 365,000 in 2006, of which doctoral enrollment is 208,000.