On one day – one minute – in the next month, the world's 7 billionth human resident will be born. The United Nations is marking the occasion on the last day of October with what it describes it as an "opportunity" to promote "7 billion actions" for environmental sustainability and women's education, estimating that the world's population will top out at 9 or 10 billion mid-century before declining as economic development matures in countries with higher birth rates.
They appear to be right. Worldwide, fertility rates in countries such as Mexico and Bangladesh have fallen vastly in a single generation – thanks, in large part, to what the economist Amartya Sen terms "development as freedom". Yet Thomas Malthus, who at the turn of the 19th century predicted that population growth would inevitably lead to famine, still has his fans among those inclined to believe that humans mean little but bad news.
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