Delhi was the largest city in terms of number of inhabitants in India in 2023.The capital city was estimated to house nearly 33 million people, with Mumbai ranking second that year. India's population estimate was 1.4 billion, ahead of China that same year.
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Graph and download economic data for Geographical Outreach: Number of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) in 3 Largest Cities for India (INDFCACLNUM) from 2007 to 2015 about ATM, India, banks, and depository institutions.
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Population in the largest city (% of urban population) in India was reported at 6.3201 % in 2024, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. India - Population in the largest city - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on June of 2025.
In 2023, approximately a third of the total population in India lived in cities. The trend shows an increase of urbanization by more than 4 percent in the last decade, meaning people have moved away from rural areas to find work and make a living in the cities. Leaving the fieldOver the last decade, urbanization in India has increased by almost 4 percent, as more and more people leave the agricultural sector to find work in services. Agriculture plays a significant role in the Indian economy and it employs almost half of India’s workforce today, however, its contribution to India’s GDP has been decreasing while the services sector gained in importance. No rural exodus in sightWhile urbanization is increasing as more jobs in telecommunications and IT are created and the private sector gains in importance, India is not facing a shortage of agricultural workers or a mass exodus to the cities yet. India is a very densely populated country with vast areas of arable land – over 155 million hectares of land was cultivated land in India as of 2015, for example, and textiles, especially cotton, are still one of the major exports. So while a shift of the workforce focus is obviously taking place, India is not struggling to fulfill trade demands yet.
As of September 2024, Mumbai had the highest cost of living among other cities in the country, with an index value of ****. Gurgaon, a satellite city of Delhi and part of the National Capital Region (NCR) followed it with an index value of ****. What is cost of living? The cost of living varies depending on geographical regions and factors that affect the cost of living in an area include housing, food, utilities, clothing, childcare, and fuel among others. The cost of living is calculated based on different measures such as the consumer price index (CPI), living cost indexes, and wage price index. CPI refers to the change in the value of consumer goods and services. The wage price index, on the other hand, measures the change in labor services prices due to market pressures. Lastly, the living cost indexes calculate the impact of changing costs on different households. The relationship between wages and costs determines affordability and shifts in the cost of living. Mumbai tops the list Mumbai usually tops the list of most expensive cities in India. As the financial and entertainment hub of the country, Mumbai offers wide opportunities and attracts talent from all over the country. It is the second-largest city in India and has one of the most expensive real estates in the world.
This statistic illustrates the consumption expenditure per capita across the largest cities in India in 2015. The nation capital region, Delhi, had a per capita consumer expenditure of approximately 138,000 Indian rupees. Bangalore had the highest per capita consumption expenditure during the measured time period.
The global per capita expenditure on apparel in 2015 and 2025, broken down by region, can be found here.
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Hourly and Daily Weather Dataset of Top 50 Most populous Indian cities. Weather data from https://open-meteo.com/ from January 01, 1980 to December 31, 1989.
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Japan’s largest city, greater Tokyo, had a staggering 37.19 million inhabitants in 2023, making it the most populous city across the Asia-Pacific region. India had the second largest city after Japan with a population consisting of approximately 33 million inhabitants. Contrastingly, approximately 410 thousand inhabitants populated Papua New Guinea's largest city in 2023. A megacity regionNot only did Japan and India have the largest cities throughout the Asia-Pacific region but they were among the three most populated cities worldwide in 2023. Interestingly, over half on the world’s megacities were situated in the Asia-Pacific region. However, being home to more than half of the world’s population, it does not seem surprising that by 2025 it is expected that more than two thirds of the megacities across the globe will be located in the Asia Pacific region. Other megacities are also expected to emerge within the Asia-Pacific region throughout the next decade. There have even been suggestions that Indonesia’s Jakarta and its conurbation will overtake Greater Tokyo in terms of population size by 2030. Increasing populationsIncreased populations in megacities can be down to increased economic activity. As more countries across the Asia-Pacific region have made the transition from agriculture to industry, the population has adjusted accordingly. Thus, more regions have experienced higher shares of urban populations. However, as many cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Seoul have an aging population, this may have an impact on their future population sizes, with these Asian regions estimated to have significant shares of the population being over 65 years old by 2035.
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Chart and table of population level and growth rate for the Mumbai, India metro area from 1950 to 2025.
As of 2024, Mumbai had a gross domestic product of *** billion U.S. dollars, the highest among other major cities in India. It was followed by Delhi with a GDP of around *** billion U.S. dollars. India’s megacities also boast the highest GDP among other cities in the country. What drives the GDP of India’s megacities? Mumbai is the financial capital of the country, and its GDP growth is primarily fueled by the financial services sector, port-based trade, and the Hindi film industry or Bollywood. Delhi in addition to being the political hub hosts a significant services sector. The satellite cities of Noida and Gurugram amplify the city's economic status. The southern cities of Bengaluru and Chennai have emerged as IT and manufacturing hubs respectively. Hyderabad is a significant player in the pharma and IT industries. Lastly, the western city of Ahmedabad, in addition to its strategic location and ports, is powered by the textile, chemicals, and machinery sectors. Does GDP equal to quality of life? Cities propelling economic growth and generating a major share of GDP is a global phenomenon, as in the case of Tokyo, Shanghai, New York, and others. However, the GDP, which measures the market value of all final goods and services produced in a region, does not always translate to a rise in quality of life. Five of India’s megacities featured in the Global Livability Index, with low ranks among global peers. The Index was based on indicators such as healthcare, political stability, environment and culture, infrastructure, and others.
The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) was carried out as the principal activity of a collaborative project to strengthen the research capabilities of the Population Reasearch Centres (PRCs) in India, initiated by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW), Government of India, and coordinated by the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Bombay. Interviews were conducted with a nationally representative sample of 89,777 ever-married women in the age group 13-49, from 24 states and the National Capital Territoty of Delhi. The main objective of the survey was to collect reliable and up-to-date information on fertility, family planning, mortality, and maternal and child health. Data collection was carried out in three phases from April 1992 to September 1993. THe NFHS is one of the most complete surveys of its kind ever conducted in India.
The households covered in the survey included 500,492 residents. The young age structure of the population highlights the momentum of the future population growth of the country; 38 percent of household residents are under age 15, with their reproductive years still in the future. Persons age 60 or older constitute 8 percent of the population. The population sex ratio of the de jure residents is 944 females per 1,000 males, which is slightly higher than sex ratio of 927 observed in the 1991 Census.
The primary objective of the NFHS is to provide national-level and state-level data on fertility, nuptiality, family size preferences, knowledge and practice of family planning, the potentiel demand for contraception, the level of unwanted fertility, utilization of antenatal services, breastfeeding and food supplemation practises, child nutrition and health, immunizations, and infant and child mortality. The NFHS is also designed to explore the demographic and socioeconomic determinants of fertility, family planning, and maternal and child health. This information is intended to assist policymakers, adminitrators and researchers in assessing and evaluating population and family welfare programmes and strategies. The NFHS used uniform questionnaires and uniform methods of sampling, data collection and analysis with the primary objective of providing a source of demographic and health data for interstate comparisons. The data collected in the NFHS are also comparable with those of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) conducted in many other countries.
National
The population covered by the 1992-93 DHS is defined as the universe of all women age 13-49 who were either permanent residents of the households in the NDHS sample or visitors present in the households on the night before the survey were eligible to be interviewed.
Sample survey data
SAMPLE DESIGN
The sample design for the NFHS was discussed during a Sample Design Workshop held in Madurai in Octber, 1991. The workshop was attended by representative from the PRCs; the COs; the Office of the Registrar General, India; IIPS and the East-West Center/Macro International. A uniform sample design was adopted in all the NFHS states. The Sample design adopted in each state is a systematic, stratified sample of households, with two stages in rural areas and three stages in urban areas.
SAMPLE SIZE AND ALLOCATION
The sample size for each state was specified in terms of a target number of completed interviews with eligible women. The target sample size was set considering the size of the state, the time and ressources available for the survey and the need for separate estimates for urban and rural areas of the stat. The initial target sample size was 3,000 completed interviews with eligible women for states having a population of 25 million or less in 1991; 4,000 completed interviews for large states with more than 25 million population; 8,000 for Uttar Pradesh, the largest state; and 1,000 each for the six small northeastern states. In States with a substantial number of backward districts, the initial target samples were increased so as to allow separate estimates to be made for groups of backward districts.
The urban and rural samples within states were drawn separetly and , to the extent possible, sample allocation was proportional to the size of the urban-rural populations (to facilitate the selection of a self-weighting sample for each state). In states where the urban population was not sufficiently large to provide a sample of at least 1,000 completed interviews with eligible women, the urban areas were appropriately oversampled (except in the six small northeastern states).
THE RURAL SAMPLE: THE FRAME, STRATIFICATION AND SELECTION
A two-stage stratified sampling was adopted for the rural areas: selection of villages followed by selection of households. Because the 1991 Census data were not available at the time of sample selection in most states, the 1981 Census list of villages served as the sampling frame in all the states with the exception of Assam, Delhi and Punjab. In these three states the 1991 Census data were used as the sampling frame.
Villages were stratified prior to selection on the basis of a number of variables. The firts level of stratification in all the states was geographic, with districts subdivided into regions according to their geophysical characteristics. Within each of these regions, villages were further stratified using some of the following variables : village size, distance from the nearest town, proportion of nonagricultural workers, proportion of the population belonging to scheduled castes/scheduled tribes, and female literacy. However, not all variables were used in every state. Each state was examined individually and two or three variables were selected for stratification, with the aim of creating not more than 12 strata for small states and not more than 15 strata for large states. Females literacy was often used for implicit stratification (i.e., the villages were ordered prior to selection according to the proportion of females who were literate). Primary sampling Units (PSUs) were selected systematically, with probaility proportional to size (PPS). In some cases, adjacent villages with small population sizes were combined into a single PSU for the purpose of sample selection. On average, 30 households were selected for interviewing in each selected PSU.
In every state, all the households in the selected PSUs were listed about two weeks prior to the survey. This listing provided the necessary frame for selecting households at the second sampling stage. The household listing operation consisted of preparing up-to-date notional and layout sketch maps of each selected PSU, assigning numbers to structures, recording addresses (or locations) of these structures, identifying the residential structures, and listing the names of the heads of all the households in the residentiak structures in the selected PSU. Each household listing team consisted of a lister and a mapper. The listing operation was supervised by the senior field staff of the concerned CO and the PRC in each state. Special efforts were made not to miss any household in the selected PSU during the listing operation. In PSUs with fewer than 500 households, a complete household listing was done. In PSUs with 500 or more households, segmentation of the PSU was done on the basis of existing wards in the PSU, and two segments were selected using either systematic sampling or PPS sampling. The household listing in such PSUs was carried out in the selected segments. The households to be interviewed were selected from provided with the original household listing, layout sketch map and the household sample selected for each PSU. All the selected households were approached during the data collection, and no substitution of a household was allowed under any circumstances.
THE RURAL URBAN SAMPLE: THE FRAME, STRATIFICATION AND SELECTION
A three-stage sample design was adopted for the urban areas in each state: selection of cities/towns, followed by urban blocks, and finally households. Cities and towns were selected using the 1991 population figures while urban blocks were selected using the 1991 list of census enumeration blocks in all the states with the exception of the firts phase states. For the first phase states, the list of urban blocks provided by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSSO) served as the sampling frame.
All cities and towns were subdivided into three strata: (1) self-selecting cities (i.e., cities with a population large enough to be selected with certainty), (2) towns that are district headquaters, and (3) other towns. Within each stratum, the cities/towns were arranged according to the same kind of geographic stratification used in the rural areas. In self-selecting cities, the sample was selected according to a two-stage sample design: selection of the required number of urban blocks, followed by selection of households in each of selected blocks. For district headquarters and other towns, a three stage sample design was used: selection of towns with PPS, followed by selection of two census blocks per selected town, followed by selection of households from each selected block. As in rural areas, a household listing was carried out in the selected blocks, and an average of 20 households per block was selected systematically.
Face-to-face
Three types of questionnaires were used in the NFHS: the Household Questionnaire, the Women's Questionnaire, and the Village Questionnaire. The overall content
Nigeria has the largest population in Africa. As of 2024, the country counted over 232.6 million individuals, whereas Ethiopia, which ranked second, has around 132 million inhabitants. Egypt registered the largest population in North Africa, reaching nearly 116 million people. In terms of inhabitants per square kilometer, Nigeria only ranks seventh, while Mauritius has the highest population density on the whole African continent. The fastest-growing world region Africa is the second most populous continent in the world, after Asia. Nevertheless, Africa records the highest growth rate worldwide, with figures rising by over two percent every year. In some countries, such as Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Chad, the population increase peaks at over three percent. With so many births, Africa is also the youngest continent in the world. However, this coincides with a low life expectancy. African cities on the rise The last decades have seen high urbanization rates in Asia, mainly in China and India. However, African cities are currently growing at larger rates. Indeed, most of the fastest-growing cities in the world are located in Sub-Saharan Africa. Gwagwalada, in Nigeria, and Kabinda, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, ranked first worldwide. By 2035, instead, Africa's fastest-growing cities are forecast to be Bujumbura, in Burundi, and Zinder, Nigeria.
In 2023, approximately 86 percent of the population in Papua New Guinea were living in rural areas. In comparison, approximately eight percent of the population in Japan were living in rural areas that year. Urbanization and development Despite the desirable outcomes that urbanization entails, these rapid demographic shifts have also brought about unintended changes. For instance, in countries like India, rapid urbanization has led to unsustainable and crowded cities, with half of the urban population in India estimated to live in slums. In China, population shifts from rural to urban areas have aggravated regional economic disparities. For example, the migration of workers into coastal cities has made possible the creation of urban clusters of immense economic magnitude, with the Yangtze River Delta city cluster accounting for about a fifth of the country’s gross domestic product. Megacities and their future Home to roughly 60 percent of the world’s population, the Asia-Pacific region also shelters most of the globe’s largest urban agglomerations. Megacities, a term used for cities or urban areas with a population of over ten million people, are characterized by high cultural diversity and advanced infrastructure. As a result, they create better economic opportunities, and they are often hubs of innovation. For instance, many megacities in the Asia-Pacific region offer high local purchasing power to their residents. Despite challenges like pollution, income inequality, or the rising cost of living, megacities in the Asia-Pacific region have relatively high population growth rates and are expected to expand.
In financial year 2024, the south-western state of Goa had the most expensive average daily rate (ADR) for hotel rooms at about 132 U.S. dollars. On the other hand, Lucknow had the lowest average daily rate of about 59 dollars during the same time period.
This statistic shows the age structure in Brazil from 2013 to 2023. In 2023 about 19.94 percent of Brazil's total population were aged 0 to 14 years. Population of Brazil Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world by area and population and the largest in both South America and the Latin American region. With a total population of more than 200 million inhabitants in 2013, Brazil also ranks fifth in terms of population numbers. Brazil is a founding member of the United Nations, the G20, CPLP, and a member of the BRIC countries. BRIC is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, and China, the four major emerging market countries. The largest cities in Brazil are São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador. São Paulo alone reports over 11.1 million inhabitants. Due to a steady increase in the life expectancy in Brazil, the average age of the population has also rapidly increased. From 1950 until 2015, the average age of the population increased by an impressive 12 years; in 2015, the average age of the population in Brazil was reported to be around 31 years. As a result of the increasing average age, the percentage of people aged between 15 and 64 years has also increased: In 2013, about 68.4 percent of the population in Brazil was aged between 15 and 64 years.
This statistic shows the ten countries with the largest increase in the size of the population between 2023 and 2050. Based on forecasted population figures, the population of India is projected to be around *** million more in 2050 than it was in 2023.
In 2023, Bengaluru-based start-ups received a total funding of 4 billion U.S. dollars. Thereby, the south Indian city is the most popular start-up hub in India followed by the National Capital Region of New Delhi (including Gurugram and Noida) as well as Mumbai.
In 2022, the union territory of Delhi had the highest urban population density of over 18 thousand persons per square kilometer. While the rural population density was highest in union territory of Puducherry, followed by the state of Bihar.
In 2024, the most popular used car model in metro cities in India was Maruti Suzuki Swift, with 5.9 percent of total used car sales. It was followed by the Hyundai i10, with 4.6 percent. Maruti Suzuki is the most popular car brand in the country.
In 2022, ****** was home to the highest number of millionaires, followed by India’s capital New Delhi, and the IT capital - Bengaluru. This comes as no surprise since all three cities have the largest share of high net worth households along with a booming economic outlook. Overall, India had around *** billionaires as of March 2023, and ranked third globally in terms of its ultra-net-worth individuals. A growing wealth gap Despite this, India also has a very high wealth inequality with millions of people living below the poverty line. In fact, according to the last census, the state of Maharashtra (with Mumbai as its capital city) had the highest number of slums across the country with over *** million households. Furthermore, according to a 2015 study on the geography of the super-rich, Bangalore was ranked first in terms of the inequality between its rich and poor, with the wealth of the city’s billionaires being ******* times that of the average per capita GDP in the city. Mumbai came second in this listing, while Delhi was ranked fifth. It's a rich man's world As of 2018, the richest ** percent of Indians owned **** percent of the country’s wealth. The Indian economy was also seen to be one of the fastest growing economies across the world. This indicates the level of unequal distribution of wealth in the country. This is a matter of grave concern and has several implications in terms of the country’s development and progress.
Delhi was the largest city in terms of number of inhabitants in India in 2023.The capital city was estimated to house nearly 33 million people, with Mumbai ranking second that year. India's population estimate was 1.4 billion, ahead of China that same year.