PARIS, Oct 2: The world’s population will rise to 9.7 billion in 2050 from the current level of 7.1 billion and India will overtake China as the world’s most populous nation, a French study said on Wednesday.

A bi-annual report by the French Institute of Demographic Studies (Ined) projected there would be 10 to 11 billion people on the planet by the end of the century.

The projections ran parallel to forecasts by the United Nations, the World Bank and other prominent national institutes.

A UN study in June said the global population would swell to 9.6bn in 2050 and the number of people aged 60 and above would catapult from 841 million now to two billion in 2050 and nearly three billion in 2100.

Ined said Africa would be home to a quarter of the world’s population in 2050 with 2.5bn people, more than double the current level of 1.1 billion.

The world’s most populous nations are currently China with 1.3bn people; followed by India (1.2bn); the US (316.2m); Indonesia (248.5m) and Brazil (195.5m).

But in 2050, India will take pole position with 1.6bn people with China in second place at 1.3bn.—AFP