POPULATION OF INDIA FORECAST TO OVERTAKE CHINA’S BY 2030

By Mark Turner, Financial Times, February 24, 2005

India's population will overtake that of China before 2030, five years
earlier than previously forecast, a new UN population report predicts.

The United Nations' latest "World Population Prospects", released
yesterday in New York, estimates there will be 1,395m people in India by
2025, and 1,593m in 2050. Meanwhile, China's population will grow to
1,441m by 2025, before slipping 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."

By 2050, the world's population will be 9.1bn people, up from 6.5bn today,
with almost all the growth registered in developing countries.

"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."

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 was "without doubt" that India and
China would "exchange places", mainly because of differences in fertility.

Thomas Buettner, 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".

At the same time it was "also due to a very rigid population policy",
although Chinese officials had "started thinking about relaxing that
policy because they are concerned about rapid ageing of the population",
he said.

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 today 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. By 2050, there will be a predicted 101m Turks, up from 73m
today.

The UK's population will overtake that of France by 2025, rising from
almost 60m today to more than 67m by 2050. According to an average
scenario, there will be 60.5m people in the UK by 2010, 62.5m by 2020, and
64.7m people by 2030.

By 2050, France's population will rise from 60.5m to 63.1m, while
Germany's will drop from 83m to 79m. There will be 7m fewer Italians, with
a fall from 58m to 51m.

Japan's population declines from 128m to 112m, according to the same
variant, and Russia's from 143m to 112m. The US population is projected to
rise from 298m to 395m, due to higher fertility and migration.