Population trends in the 21st century: what are India’s opportunities?

Global demographic trends offer both challenges and opportunities for India.

The 21st century is likely to unfold as a dynamic era of significant shifts in global population trends. In this context, our latest issue of Economy Watch navigates the evolving contours of population shares of individual countries and major country groups, the dynamics of their working-age population, and emerging urbanization trends. 

Share in global total and working age population in the 21^st century: India and the world

For most country groups, their share in population changes marginally from 2000 to 2070 (Table 1). There is only one country group namely, Sub-Saharan Africa, whose share in global population is projected to increase from 10.5% in 2000 to 26.9% by 2070. India’s global population share is projected to fall incrementally from 17.8% in 2020 to 16.4% by 2070. Amongst the developed country groups, Europe’s share falls from 11.8% to 6.3% between 2000 and 2070 and that of Northern America from 5.1% to 4.2%. Another noticeable fall is seen for Eastern and South-eastern Asia and Oceania wherein China’s population share falls from 20.6% to 10.5% between 2000 and 2070. Thus, two country groups namely, Central and Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, that are currently relatively lower income country groups, would account for more than 50% of the world population by 2070.

The share of working age population in global working age population is projected to be the highest at 28.9% by 2070 for Sub-Saharan Africa, followed by central and southern Asia at 26.6%. India’s share of working age population in the total global working age population is not significantly higher than its share in total global population. The peak of this profile of working age population is reached in 2030 at 18.8% and then it falls to 16.4% by 2070. Thus, India’s share in the supply of working age persons would be lower than that of Eastern and Southeastern Asia and Oceania, particularly up to 2040 and Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in the latter three decades.

Considering individual countries, India is projected to have the largest share in total and working age global population by 2070 exceeding the next highest country namely, China by a significant margin.

Who is aging faster than India?

All countries are ageing fast, as reflected by rising median age of populations. Median age would be the highest for China by 2070 at 52.6 years. The eastern and South-eastern and Oceania group would also have a much older population by 2070 with a median age of 47.7 years. The youngest population would be that of Sub-Saharan Africa where the median age would be 25.3 years in 2070. India’s median age is projected to increase from 20 years in 2000 to 41 years by 2070, reflecting substantive ageing of the population in comparison.

India to remain least urbanized in the 21^st century

An important dimension of the evolving population profile of different countries/country groups pertains to their location in terms of the rural vis-à-vis urban areas. As populations progressively shift towards urban areas, the population density and their per capita incomes increase. For all country groups, we can observe that the urbanization rate is increasing without any exception. By 2040, there would only be two country groups namely, central and southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, where urbanization would be less than or close to 50%. India’s urbanization rate at 65.8% in 2070 would be lower than that of Sub-Saharan Africa (Table 2). It may, however, be noted that India’s urbanization rate is somewhat underestimated¹.