View of Earth
View of Earth from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite. NASA/JPL.

A report by U.S. Census Bureau has revealed that there are approximately 6,959,000,772 people in the world right now and the world is very close to reaching the 7 billion mark. The 7 billionth person is most likely to be born in China or India.

The 7 billionth baby, according to the United Nations population division, is set to be born on October 31 this year during the Halloween. Critics have made fun of the fact and said that they hope it’s not some kind of a mythical re-incarnation of devil himself.

India, which has a population of 1.2 billion, has been predicted to take the lead as the world’s most populous country from China at 1.3 billion. The U.N., however, is attributing this explosion in world population to the rapid growth in Africa and believes that the continent’s population could triple in the next 90 years.

“Every billion more people makes life more difficult for everybody — it’s as simple as that,” John Bongaarts, a demographer at the Population Council, a research group in New York, told New York Times. “Is it the end of the world? No. Can we feed 10 billion people? Probably. But we obviously would be better off with a smaller population.”

In a new report, the United Nation population division raised its forecast for the year 2050, estimating that the world would most likely have 9.3 billion people then, an increase of 156 million over the previous estimate for that year, published in 2008.

“West and Central Africa are the two big regions of the world where the fertility transition is happening, but at a snail’s pace,” said John F. May, a World Bank demographer.

Another report suggests that China could soon enter the ranks of countries with declining populations, peaking at 1.4 billion in the next couple of decades, then falling to 941 million by 2100, the New York Times reported.