Kora Jade - Earth's number seven billion?

Carlee Bowman's baby girl, due by caesarean section today, could be the world's seven billionth person. Photo / Sarah Ivey

At some point today, a child will be born who will bring the world's population to seven billion.

Carlee Bowman will have her daughter this morning and hopes she may be the one to get the world to this much-anticipated milestone.

The world's population is growing by 200,000 people a day and by the end of the century, there will be 10 billion people, according to a report the United Nations released to coincide with the seven billion milestone.

Ms Bowman will give birth to her first daughter, Kora Jade, by caesarean surgery at Waitakere Hospital and is very excited her child will enter the world on such an important day in the Earth's history.

"The fact that she could possibly be the seven billionth person is pretty awesome," she said.

The 30-year-old Te Atatu mother said she would tell Kora Jade, when she was old enough to understand, that she could have been the one to tip the population to seven billion. "It's something pretty cool to look back on."

She and her partner, Rhys Peers, have two boys Cole, 8, and Tait, 1, and are very excited to be having a girl.

"So we'll have the complete set."

Ms Bowman said she was nervous about her C-section but excited to meet her daughter for the first time.

The United Nations annual report into global population said much of the increase this century is expected to come from high-fertility countries - 39 in Africa, nine in Asia, six in Oceania and four in Latin America.

Women today are having half as many children as their forbears - the global average is now down to 2.5 children per woman and that number is continuing to fall.

In the early 1950s the global average life expectancy was about 48 years, which leaped to about 68 in the first decade of this century.

Infant deaths plunged from 133 per 1000 births in the 1950s to 46 in 2010.

These huge improvements have been attributed to worldwide immunisation campaigns which greatly reduced the prevalence of childhood diseases.

MILESTONES
1804 1 billion
1927 2 billion
1959 3 billion
1974 4 billion
1987 5 billion
1999 6 billion
2011 7 billion