Findings by the World Inequality Lab in 'Global Justice Report: A Plan for Equality and Prosperity With Planetary Boundaries' indicated that India is likely to surpass China in terms of its share of global GDP measured in purchasing power parity (PPP) by 2060.
The report also added that China's GDP contribution is expected to decrease in the second half of the 21st century.
World Inequality Lab (WIL) is a research laboratory based at the Paris School of Economics (PSE) and focused on the study of inequality worldwide.
The report, regarding China, said that it is worth emphasising that the country's share in world GDP is currently about 20 per cent in PPP terms (about one third higher than the US) and is scheduled to be twice as large as the US by 2035.
"However, China's population share is falling very fast, from 23 per cent of the world population in 1945 to about 17 per cent in 2025 and less than 8 per cent in 2100. As a consequence, the share of China in world GDP is projected to stabilise and decline in the second half of the 21st century, and to be overtaken by India around 2060," it said.
In any case, the report said, China is very unlikely to ever reach the kind of hegemonic position which the US had in the world around 1950 (with as much as 35- 40 per cent of the world's GDP) or which Europe had around 1900 -1910 (around 40 to 45 per cent).
In brief, it said the world is set to be multipolar in the 21st century, unlike the worlds of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The report pointed out that it is also striking that India has much more inequality than China, but much lower productivity growth, which can, however, also be explained by larger and better-targeted human capital expenditure in China.
Purchasing power parities (PPPs) measure the total amount of goods and services that a single unit of a country's currency can buy in another country.
The PPP between countries A and B measures the amount of country A's currency required to purchase a basket of goods and services in country A compared to the amount of country B's currency to purchase a similar basket of goods and services in the country.
According to the latest World Economic Outlook (WEO), in 2026, India's gross domestic product, the total value of all goods and services produced inside the country, will be around USD 4.15 trillion (up from USD 3.92 trillion in 2025) while the UK's GDP will hit USD 4.27 trillion (up from USD 4 trillion in 2025) and Japan's GDP would actually fall from USD 4.48 trillion in 2025 to USD 4.38 trillion in 2026.
The US GDP in 2026 is expected to be USD 32.38 trillion, while China, the second-largest economy, is pegged at USD 20.85 trillion.
With inputs from PTI