page_title: Demographics of India
section_title: Salient features
hierarchical_section_title: Demographics of India / Salient features
caption_attribution_description: English: Birth rates in India, 1971-2008
context_page_description: India is the second most populated country in the world with nearly a fifth of the world's population. According to the 2019 revision of the World Population Prospects population stood at 1,352,642,280.
  During 1975–2010, the population doubled to 1.2 billion. The Indian population reached the billion mark in 1998. India is projected to be the world's most populous country by 2024, surpassing the population of China. It is expected to become the first country to be home to more than 1.5 billion people by 2030, and its population is set to reach 1.7 billion by 2050. Its population growth rate is 1.13%, ranking 112th in the world in 2017.
  India has more than 50% of its population below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35. It is expected that, in 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan; and, by 2030, India's dependency ratio should be just over 0.4. However, the number of children in India peaked more than a decade ago and is now falling. The number of children under the age of five peaked in 2007; since then the number has been falling.
context_section_description: India occupies 2.41% of the world's land area but supports over 18% of the world's population. At the 2001 census 72.2% of the population lived in about 638,000 villages and the remaining 27.8% lived in more than 5,100 towns and over 380 urban agglomerations.
  India's population exceeded that of the entire continent of Africa by 200 million people in 2010. However, because Africa's population growth is nearly double that of India, it is expected to surpass both China and India by 2025.
caption: Crude birth rate trends in India
  (per 1000 people, national average)[48][49][50]
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