Explained | India now has 1.4 billion people. What does it mean for their health?
The HinduPublished : Mar 03, 2023 15:01 IST India’s population reached 1.4 billion people at the end of last year, according to estimates from the World Population Review. The US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has predicted that India’s population could fall back to around one billion by the end of the century. And population growth is not going to continue much longer.” Exaggerated expectations With more than half of India’s population under 30 years of age, several argue that the country’s young people give its economy an edge in the form of a demographic dividend—the economic growth potential which comes from the shift in a population’s age structure. “Rapid population growth makes eradicating poverty, combating hunger and malnutrition, and increasing the coverage of health and education systems more difficult,” said Li Junhua from the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs.