Seven days from now the world's seven billionth baby will be born. That's according to the UN's projections預測, and it's using the milestone to take stock of trends in population growth.
The big question is how long the planet can continue to satisfy滿足 the voracious貪婪的 appetite of its growing number of human inhabitants居民.
In fact, over the past six decades, the global fertility rate生育率 has been cut in half. Statistically from five children per woman to 2.5. But 78 million babies are still being born every year, almost all of them in developing countries.
The UN says women in these countries are having so many babies because of poverty, lack of education, income and access to birth control.
Not only that, they and their children face a high risk of poor health, and early death. So the UN is highlighting強調 the need to boost提高 education and employment opportunities for poor women: in other words, address解決 the poverty, and the demography will look after itself, as it did in Europe.
Barbara Plett, BBC News, New York
This text is from bbc learning english
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