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According to recent United Nations projections, India will overtake China as the world's most populous country on July 1, when its population reaches 1.429 million. Although this has raised alarm on several sides, Twitter CEO Elon Musk believes that the demographics of the country will determine how it evolves in the future. “Demographics is destiny,” Elon Musk tweeted on Saturday in response to a tweet that ranked countries based on population estimates, with India topping the list. The billionaire has long advocated for higher birth rates to combat an aging population. “Population collapse due to low birth rate is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming,” he tweeted in August.
Elon Musk even has a solution to the resource scarcity problem. He longs to colonize Mars and develop a human civilization there.
The Indian population has a median age of 28.2 years. The average Chinese is 39 years old, so the average Indian is ten years younger than the average Chinese. India will have a large workforce for many years to come, which is often mentioned as a possible positive factor for the country's future economic growth.
However, to fully reap the benefits of the demographic dividend, strong government action is needed. As Amartya Sen argued in his famous book Development as Freedom: "The success of the demographic dividend depends on investments in education, health and social infrastructure that allow young people to fully participate in the modern economy."
