Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, responded to recent predictions from the United Nations that on July 1, India would surpass China as the world’s most populated nation.
Instead, according to Musk, the country’s demographics will dictate how it develops. Musk declared on Twitter that “Demographics is destiny.” As per current UN assessment, India now has 1428.6 million people, whereas China has 1425.7 million.
Earlier, in August, Musk said that low birth rates were a much greater threat to civilization than global warming since they caused the population to collapse. Since the United Nations began recording population numbers in the year 1950, India has not once ranked first among the world’s most populated countries.
China’s population dropped for the first time since 1960 the previous year. Beijing repealed its rigorous “one-child policy,” implemented in the 1980s due to overpopulation concerns, in 2016, and began allowing couples to have three children in 2021. China is on the verge of a demographic collapse as its workforce ages and fertility rates fall.
Meanwhile, the United States ranks third with an estimated population of 340 million people. India has not conducted a census since 2011, hence there are no new official data on its population numbers available.
The once-in-a-decade census in India was set for 2021, but it was pushed back due to the coronavirus epidemic. According to UN projections, the world’s population will approximately reach 8.045bn by the middle of 2023.
