World and Indian population trends and implications

Subject: Economy

Context:

A new analysis published in The Lancet has projected about world population and its trends.

Concept:

Findings

• World population will peak much earlier than previously estimated. It projects the peak at 9.73 billion in 2064, which is 36 years earlier than the 11 billion peak projected for 2100 by last year’s UN report World Population Prospects.
• For India, the report projects a peak population of 1.6 billion in 2048, up from 1.38 billion in 2017. By 2100, the population is projected to decline by 32% to 1.09 billion.
• The paper suggests that continued trends in female educational attainment and access to contraception will hasten declines in fertility and slow population growth.
• For a generation to exactly replace itself, the replacement-level total fertility rate (TFR) is taken to be 2.1, representing the average number of children a woman would need to have. I
• In the study, the global TFR is predicted to steadily decline from 2.37 in 2017 to 1.66 in 2100.