1in8B › Odds by country › India

If you were born in India

1 in 6 babies on Earth is born in India, about 23.2 million a year. If your birthplace were drawn by lot, you would be born here with a chance of 1 in 6. Below is what awaits a child born here, according to the statistics, and three lives lived here in the game.

What stands out here

People here live 1.2 years less than the world average: 72.3 years against 73.5 years.
2.7 in 100 children here die before age five, 1.4 times fewer than the world average.
The World Bank classes it as a lower-middle-income country. There are 46 such countries, and 46 in 100 of the world’s babies are born in them.
Women here have 2.0 children on average; the world average is 2.2.
It is one of the ten countries with the most equal incomes in the world (Gini index 23).

The odds in numbers

Indicator	India	World
Births a year	23,187,405	132,315,943
Chance of being born here	1 in 6	—
Life expectancy, men	70.7 years	71 years
Life expectancy, women	73.9 years	75.9 years
Die before age 1, per 100 children	2.3	2.8
Die before age 5, per 100 children	2.7	3.7
Die between ages 15 and 60, per 100 men	18	17
Die between ages 15 and 60, per 100 women	12	11
Maternal deaths per 100,000 births	80	187
Children per woman	2.0	2.2
GDP per person a year, at purchasing power parity	$11,700	$25,400
Income inequality, Gini index (0–100)	23	—
Can read and write, per 100 adults	78	86
Average years of schooling, adults	6.9 years	8.4 years
University enrolment, gross ratio (can exceed 100)	34	48
Married before 18, per 100 young women	22	16
Live in cities, per 100	36	58
Work in farming, per 100 workers	42	27
Working or looking for work, per 100 women	32	48
Living with HIV, per 100 adults aged 15–49	0.2	0.7
Homicides per 100,000 people a year	2.8	4.8
Road deaths per 100,000 people a year	14.6	15
Suicides per 100,000 people a year	12.6	9.1
Use tobacco, per 100 adults	23	20
Born in another country, per 100 residents	0.3	3.7
Life evaluation, 0 to 10	4.5	5.4

“World” is the average weighted by population, and by births for child and maternal mortality. ≈ marks an estimate: there is no published figure for this country.

Three lives lived here in the game

This is how the life of a child born in India could turn out. The game lived 20 lives on its own, with no player, by this country’s numbers. Here are three of them: one of the shortest, the middle one and one of the longest.

Aarav Ghosh
Born in 2026 in rural India, into one of the poorest families. Education: lower secondary school. 21 years of work, last as senior officer. Moved to the United Kingdom. Married. 2 children. Age at death: 40 years. Cause: a heart attack.
Anjali Srinivasan
Born in 2026 in rural India, into a middle-income family. Education: finished school. 59 years of work, last as foreman. Widowed. 2 children. 5 grandchildren. Age at death: 78 years. Cause: a heart attack.
Dinesh Varma
Born in 2026 in rural India, into a middle-income family. Education: finished school. 55 years of work. Married. 1 child. 1 grandchild. Age at death: 84 years. Cause: a heart attack.

These people are made up, and three lives are not statistics. The real numbers are in the table above.

You cannot pick a country in 1in8B: the draw decides. This one comes up with a chance of 1 in 6.

Be born

Other countries

Data: the UN, the World Bank (release of October 8, 2026), WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO, the ILO and the World Happiness Report. Where the numbers come from and what in the game is real