According to the United States Census Bureau, about 255 people are born worldwide every minute, which means a rate of roughly 367,000 per day. As the same organization estimates that 153,000 die every day too, this means a daily population increase of about 214,000. It's impossible to be completely accurate about these figures, of course - so many births and deaths go unrecorded around the world - but in fact there is general agreement that the global population is increasing by a rate of at least 200,000 per day.

There has been a lot of concern about this especially since last October, when the 7 billionth person was born, though again it wasn't possible to know for sure who this was. There are some signs that population growth may have peaked, but even if the world population remained stable the planet is already dangerously overcrowded, with basic resources like water and farming land coming under greater strain every year.