According to a report by World Data Lab, India is projected to account for 16% of global consumption at purchasing power parity (PPP) by 2050. This will be up from 4% in 1997 and 9% in 2023.

World Data Lab, a McKinsey Global Institute analysis has released a report on “Dependency and Depopulation: Confronting the Consequences of new Demographic Reality”.

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It highlighted that only North America, with a 17% share in 2050, will have a higher consumption share.

In the next quarter century, later-wave countries and regions, including emerging Asia, Latin America and the Carribean, West Asia and North Africa, India, and Sub-Saharan Africa will account for more than half of the global consumption.

This will be due to the fast-growing young population and increasing incomes.

Later-wave countries and regions are those that have seen fertility rates fall later than advanced countries.

During the same period, advanced Asia, North America, Greater China, Western Europe, and Central and Eastern Europe could account for just 30 per cent of the world’s consumption in 2050, down from 60% in 1997.

The World Data Lab report points out the shift of balance of population due to sharp declines in fertility rates by 2050, only 26% of the world population will live in first-wave regions compared to 42% in 1997. The rest will be in later-wave regions and Sub-Saharan Africa.

PPP is a way to compare the value of different currencies by adjusting for price differences between countries.

The report, interestingly, also highlighted that India’s share of world population, which was 23% in 2023, will fall to 17% in 2050. It will go down further to 15% by 2100, when it will hit 1,505 million, a growth of 5% from 2023.

The research says that the demographic dividend added 0.7% on average to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth between 1997 and 2023.