Population trends

Subject: Geography

Context:

China is set to register an absolute population decline.

Details:

In 2022-China will for the first time register an absolute decline in its population.
In 2023-India will become the largest population country -1,428.63 million surpassing China’s 1,425.67 million population as per the UN.

Trends in demographic indicators:

Fall in crude crude death rate (CDR) — the number of persons dying per year per 1,000 population.
- It was 23.2 for China and 22.2 for India in 1950 which fell to 7.3-7.4 for both in 2020.
Rise in Life Expectancy at birth:
- Between 1950 and 2020, it went up from 43.7 to 78.1 years for China and from 41.7 to 70.1 years for India.
Fall in The total fertility rate (TFR)–
- China’s TFR dipped below replacement first in 1991, which was almost 30 years before India’s.
- It was 5.8 for China and 5.7 for India in 1950, reduced to 1.3 and 1.6 respectively.

Population of prime working age:
- China:
  - The proportion of the population aged between 20 and 59 years crossed 50% in 1987 and peaked at 61.5% in 2011 and would fall below 50% by 2045.
  - The average (median) age of the population, which was 28.9 years in 2000 and 37.4 years in 2020, is expected to soar to 50.7 years by 2050.
- India-
  - The working-age population: its share in the overall population crossed 50% only in 2007, and will peak at 57% towards the mid-2030s
  - The median age of India’s population also will not go up much — from 27.3 years in 2020 to 38.1 in 2050

Concept:

Mortality rate, or death rate

It is a measure of the number of deaths in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time.
Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of deaths per 1,000 individuals per year; thus, a mortality rate of 9.5 (out of 1,000) in a population of 1,000 would mean 9.5 deaths per year in that entire population, or 0.95% out of the total.
An important specific mortality rate measure is the crude death rate, which looks at mortality from all causes in a given time interval for a given population.
- The crude death rate is the number of deaths occurring among the population of a given geographical area during a given year per 1,000 mid-year total population of the given geographical area during the same year.
Reduction in mortality normally leads to a rising population.

Life expectancy at birth

It reflects the overall mortality level of a population.
It summarizes the mortality pattern that prevails across all age groups – children and adolescents, adults and the elderly.
It is the average number of years that a newborn could expect to live, if he or she were to pass through life exposed to the sex- and age-specific death rates prevailing at the time of his or her birth, for a specific year, in a given country, territory, or geographic area.

Total fertility rate

It is defined as the total number of children that would be born to each woman if she were to live to the end of her child-bearing years and give birth to children in alignment with the prevailing age-specific fertility rates.
A drop in fertility slows down population growth, ultimately resulting in absolute declines.
Populations can keep growing even with TFRs falling. De-growth requires TFRs to remain below replacement levels for extended periods.
A TFR of 2.1 is considered as “replacement-level fertility”-–understood, a woman having two children basically replaces herself and her partner with two new lives. Since all infants may not survive to realise their reproductive potential, the replacement TFR is taken at slightly above two. It ensures that each generation replaces itself.