Hyderabad: India, projected to surpass China as the world's most populous country around 2027, is expected to add nearly 273 million people between now and 2050, and will remain the most populated country through the end of the current century, a UN report said on Monday.
'The World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights', published by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said the world's population is expected to increase by two billion people in the next 30 years, from 7.7 billion currently to 9.7 billion in 2050.
The world's population could reach its peak around the end of the current century, at a level of nearly 11 billion, according to the study, which presents the main results of the 26th round of the UN's global population estimates, projections and global demographic patterns.
The new report released here said that more than half of the projected increase in the global population up to 2050 will be concentrated in just nine countries, led by India and followed by Nigeria, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Indonesia, Egypt and the US.
The report highlighted that 'disparate population growth rates among the world's largest countries will re-order their ranking by size'.
India is projected to surpass China as the world's most populous country around 2027, according to current projections made in the report.
"India is expected to add nearly 273 million people between 2019 and 2050, while the population of Nigeria is projected to grow by 200 million. Together, these two countries could account for 23 per cent of the global population increase to 2050," the report said.
Previous UN projections had estimated that India will surpass China as the world's most populous country as early as 2022. The 2017 world population report, released by the UN two years ago, had estimated that the population of India will surpass that of China's by around 2024. In its 24th round of estimates released in 2015, the UN had projected that India will become more populous than China by 2022.
China, with 1.43 billion people in 2019, and India, with 1.37 billion, have long been the two most populous countries of the world, comprising 19 and 18 per cent, respectively, of the global total in 2019. They are followed by the United States of America, with 329 million in 2019, and Indonesia, with 271 million, the 2019 report said.
The report said that after this re-ordering between 2019 and 2050, the ranking of the five largest countries is projected to be preserved through the end of the century, when India could remain the world's most populous country with nearly 1.5 billion inhabitants, followed by China with just under 1.1 billion, Nigeria with 733 million, the US with 434 million, and Pakistan with 403 million inhabitants.