Look at India's population more than China

【Special attention】

July 11 is World Population Day. The report predicts that the Indian population will reach 1.412 billion this year, and China will be 1.426 billion. It is expected that the Indian population will exceed China in 2023.

This news has attracted widespread attention from global media. Some India and Western media may directly linage the population scale and population structure and economic growth, implying that India's population surpasses China means that the future economic growth rate will also surpass China. China will be in economic development and geopolitics. Facing a stronger opponent like India.

This conclusion is obviously too simple, but the background it produces is the complexity of people. However, it is not advisable to explore population problems- "bonus" or "disaster". Too simple expectations and too complicated intentions are not desirable.

India's fertility rate is actually downward

Although people have long expected the population of India to surpass China, this speed is much faster than expected. The "World Population Outlook" in 2019 once believes that India's population will surpass China by 2027, and this time has been significantly advanced now. And this result is also achieved in the process of declining the population growth rate of India. In 1972, India's population growth rate was 2.3%, and it has now dropped to less than 1%, and the number of fertility for each Indian woman has fallen from 5.4 in 1972 to less than two. This situation shows that the reason why the Indian population is faster than the original expected time is not because the Indians "can be born", but because the birth rate and natural growth rate of the Chinese population decrease faster. "China Statistical Yearbook 2021" disclosed that the birth rate of the Chinese population in 2020 was 8.52 ‰, which fell below 10 ‰ for the first time. The natural growth rate of the population was only 1.45 ‰. The population survey in 2020 shows that the total fertility rate of mainland China is only 1.3, which is far lower than that of generations.

Chinese people will not have much anxiety about India's population than China, and they don't seem to worry about competition from India. However, theoretically, the decline in the number of labor age population may have a negative impact on the development of my country. The number of Chinese labor age population reached the highest level of historical highest level in 2013, and then began to decrease. The social aging, the surge in population, the surge in population, the shortage of labor, the increase in labor costs, and weakening cost advantages are all factor that may affect international competitiveness. In the face of the development and change of population, my country has made major decision -making deployments such as two children and comprehensive two -child policy, and achieved positive results. In 2021, my country also further optimized fertility policies, and implemented a couple's policy and supporting measures to have three children's policies and supporting support measures to improve my country's population structure, implement the national strategy of actively responding to population aging, and maintain the advantages of human resources in my country.

Demographic Dividend?

Chinese scholars have discussed a lot about the competition that the Indian population surpasses China. On the issue of the world's largest population, India's attitude is completely different from the past. I remember that many Chinese scholars and Indian scholars joked many years ago that China is very willing to give the hat of the largest population to India. At that time, Indian scholars decisively refused. Before the Modi government, India had also reported the so -called dividend of the population, but it has been promoted that the so -called demographic dividend has begun in recent years, especially after the Modi government has launched the "Indian manufacturing" plan. Modi hopes that India can use the huge working age population to develop manufacturing and drive India's economic development. As the United States provokes the Sino -US trade war, the global industrial chain and supply chain have significantly adjusted trends, and after the outbreak of new crown pneumonia, the United States actively promotes the global industrial chain and supply chain transfer. The significant increase, its intention is very obvious, that is, hoping to use this gimmick to attract multinational companies to transfer to India, and even replace China's position in the global industrial chain and supply chain.

However, the development of the past two years has shown that this policy implemented by India has not achieved good results, and its demographic dividend has not been played. India's population structure has indeed young advantages compared to China. The age of the Chinese population is 37 years old, while India is only 28 years old, 9 years older than China, but the labor participation rate of Indian population is obviously compared to China. Low. China ’s population labor participation rate was 68%in 2021, while the total labor participation rate in India fell from 46%to 40%from 2017 to 2022.

In other words, more than half of India's 900 million people who have reached the legal work age, more than half of them are unwilling to work or cannot find a job at all. On the one hand, the Indian government cannot create enough jobs, the main reason is that India's economic structure cannot accommodate a huge number of labor. India has 12 million labor in the market each year, but the Indian government can create less than 1/10. India's economic expansion in recent decades is mainly driven by the service industry. India's service industry has contributed more than half of the economic output, but only hired 28%of India's labor force, and the development of labor -intensive industries was seriously insufficient. On the other hand, India ’s large -scale labor -old population has not been educated and trained, and cannot adapt to work. This has both the reasons for lack of education and the reason why education and labor skills are not matched. India's illness rate is high, especially women's education level is low, so only about 9%of the female population meets qualified employment or job hunting; at the same time, India also has more than 80%of engineers unemployed, and only 7%of MBA graduates. The peculiar phenomenon of employment. Population disaster?

Whether India can successfully use its potential population dividends and transform it into economic growth momentum, fundamentally depends on whether the Indian government can introduce effective economic, social, education and other policies and implement it. If the Indian government cannot create sufficient employment positions and cannot make rapid progress in labor education and training, Indian women cannot obtain higher social status and more job opportunities. "Population dividends" can only be a fantasy.

According to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute in 2020, in order to adapt to the surge in the young population, India needs to create at least 90 million new non -agricultural jobs by 2030, which will require the country's GDP to achieve 8%to 8.5 each year. %growth of. India's own economic growth forecast has basically reached this growth rate, but at present, India's economic growth rate cannot completely absorb the annual increase in labor. For countries such as India reaching their employment age each year, if they cannot create enough employment, the so -called demographic dividend may become a population disaster. In addition, India's potential population dividends are restricted by time window. Indian experts warn that the proportion of the elderly population in India in 2035 will increase significantly in the total population, and the population structure will no longer be pyramid -shaped. At that time, the window of population dividends will end.

The demographic dividend depends not only on the number of population, but whether a country's policies and related supporting measures can adapt to the more replacement and development trend of the population. Facing the "first population country" is about to change the master, the Chinese do not have to worry too much. Because China's population base is large enough, if it can further effectively improve the quality of the population, especially the quality of the laborer, with the improvement of the role of scientific and technological progress in economic development, the loss caused by the decrease in the number of Chinese laborers will be the quality of the laborer's quality Make up for improvement.

(Author: Liu Zongyi, the Secretary -General of the China and South Asian Cooperation Research Center of the Shanghai International Institute)

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