Mohammed Zaatari / AP

Nurses hold newborn babies in Sidon, Lebanon, Monday, Oct. 31, 2011. As of Oct. 31, according to the U.N. Population Fund, there will be 7 billion people sharing Earth's land and resources.

Pawan Kumar / Reuters

Vinita Yadav, a 23-year-old Indian, holds her newborn baby girl Nargis, who was born at 7:20am, inside a community health center in Mall, India on Oct. 31, 2011. The world's population will reach seven billion on 31 October 2011, according to projections by the United Nations, which says this global milestone presents both an opportunity and a challenge for the planet. While more people are living longer and healthier lives, says the U.N., gaps between rich and poor are widening and more people than ever are vulnerable to food insecurity and water shortages.

What I love about these images is that while the locations, cultures, traditions and environments vary tremendously from country to country, there is the common thread of birth and motherhood at the heart of them.

Babies born today were welcomed into the world under the camera lens of photographers, all ready to capture the symbolic seven billionth baby. While experts are unable to precisely say that the population has officially hit 7 billion people, the United Nations designated the date according to estimates and projections done by the the U.N. Population Fund.

For more information: A child is born and world population hits 7 billion.

See more PhotoBlog posts related to the seven billion population milestone:

• Introducing Danica May Camacho, the world's first 7-billionth baby
• World's largest family: 1 husband, 39 wives, 94 children
• Managing a growing world population with a shrinking water supply
• China's middle class booms, but aging population threatens prosperity
• Nations' birth rates rise and fall: Philippines welcomes 200 babies an hour
• 7 billion people tax the world's environment
• What do 7 billion people look like?
• Room for more? Squeeze in, the world population is about to hit 7 billion

Edgard Garrido / Reuters

A pediatrician measures the head of Linda Abigail, the third child of Lourdes Suyapa Rodriguez, 35, after she was born in the childbirth unit of the Escuela hospital in Tegucigalpa, Honduras on Oct. 31, 2011.

Albert Gonzalez Farran / AFP - Getty Images

Buthaina, a young Sudanese mother lies in bed with her newborn baby at El-Fasher Women's Hospital in Sudan's northern Darfur region on Oct. 31, 2011. As Sudan's population reaches 33 million persons, with approximately six million living in Darfur's three states.

Denis Sinyakov / Reuters

Medics hold an infant boy shortly after Alla Baturina gave birth to him, at a perinatal center of Moscow City Hospital Number 8 in Moscow on Oct. 31, 2011.

M.A.Pushpa Kumara / EPA

The symbolic seven billionth member of the world population from Sri Lanka, Muthumali receives a cuddle from her 23-year-old mother W.G. Dhanushika Dilani at the Castle Street Maternity Hospital in Colombo on Oct. 31, 2011. A special event was organized at the Castle Street Maternity Hospital to receive what is believed to be the seven billionth member of the world population.

Nathalie Bardou / AP

Newborn Pakistani babies, receive phototherapy treatment against neonatal jaundice, at the nursery room of a hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Monday, Oct. 31, 2011. Countries around the world marked the world's population reaching 7 billion Monday with lavish ceremonies for newborn infants symbolizing the milestone and warnings that there may be too many humans for the planet's resources.

Erik De Castro / AFP - Getty Images

A newly born baby girl named Danica May Camacho, the Philippines' symbolic seven billionth baby, is weighed in the Fabella Maternity hospital in Manila on October 31. The world's population will reach seven billion on October 31, according to projections by the United Nations, which says this global milestone presents both an opportunity and a challenge for the planet.

After all of the build-up, it seems the U.N. has decided that there should be more than one 7-billionth baby. Let the circus begin...

msnbc.com staff and news services report:

A string of festivities are being held worldwide, with a series of symbolic 7-billionth babies being born.

The celebrations began in the Philippines, where baby Danica May Camacho was greeted with cheers and an explosion of photographers' flashbulbs at Manila's Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital.

The Guardian newspaper reported that Danica, whose name means morning star, had been chosen by the U.N. to be one of a number of symbolic 7 billionth babies. It is not known who the actual baby is.

Erik De Castro / Reuters

Midwives hold Danica May Camacho up for the cameras.

Danica arrived two minutes before midnight Sunday, but doctors decided that was close enough to count for a Monday birthday. 

The baby received a shower of gifts, from a chocolate cake marked "7B Philippines" to a gift certificate for shoes.

"She looks so lovely," the mother, Camille Galura, whispered as she cradled the 5.5-pound baby, who was born about a month premature. Read the full story.

Ted Aljibe / AFP - Getty Images

Danica May Camacho is coddled by her mother Camille as United Nations resident coordinator Jacqui Badcock, left, hands over a gift and Philippine Health Secretary Enrique Ona, right, looks on, during a welcoming ceremony after she was born at a government-run maternity hospital in Manila. Weighing 2.5 kilos, the baby was delivered shortly before midnight October 30 amid an explosion of flash bulbs from a media contingent that had waited for hours at the delivery room.

See more PhotoBlog posts related to the seven billion population milestone:

• World's largest family: 1 husband, 39 wives, 94 children
• Managing a growing world population with a shrinking water supply
• China's middle class booms, but aging population threatens prosperity
• Nations' birth rates rise and fall: Philippines welcomes 200 babies an hour
• 7 billion people tax the world's environment
• What do 7 billion people look like?
• Room for more? Squeeze in, the world population is about to hit 7 billion

Adnan Abidi / Reuters

Family members of Ziona Chana pose for a group photograph in Baktawng village, India, on Oct. 7, 2011. Ziona is the head of a religious sect called "Chana," which allows polygamy and was founded by his father, Chana, in 1942. Ziona has 39 wives, 94 children and 33 grandchildren.

Reuters reports:

The more, the merrier is certainly true for Ziona Chana, a 66-year-old man in India's remote northeast with 39 wives, 94 children and 33 grandchildren -- and he wouldn't mind having more.

They all live in a four story building with 100 rooms in a mountainous village in Mizoram state, sharing borders with Myanmar and Bangladesh, media reports said.

"I once married 10 women in one year," he was quoted as saying.

Adnan Abidi / Reuters

Zuali, 37, twentieth wife of Ziona Chana, adjusts his shirt as his sons and driver watch before heading toward the construction site of a church in Baktawng, India, on Oct. 5, 2011.

Adnan Abidi / Reuters

Ziona Chana's family members wave from a vehicle on their way to a church construction site in Baktawng, India, on Oct. 5, 2011.

His wives share a dormitory near Ziona's private bedroom and locals said he likes to have seven or eight of them by his side at all times.

The sons and their wives, and all their children, live in different rooms in the same building, but share a common kitchen.

The wives take turns cooking, while his daughters clean the house and do washing. The men do outdoor jobs like farming and taking care of livestock.

EPA

Children of 67-year-old Ziona Chana have lunch at their home on Oct. 28, 2011.

The family, all 167 of them, consumes around 200 pounds of rice and more than 130 pounds of potatoes a day. They are supported by their own resources and occasional donations from followers.

"Even today, I am ready to expand my family and willing to go to any extent to marry," Ziona said.

"I have so many people to care (for) and look after, and I consider myself a lucky man."

Ziona met his oldest wife, who is three years older than he is, when he was 17.

Adnan Abidi / Reuters

A view of Ziona Chana's house in Baktawng, India, on Oct. 6, 2011. He lives in this 4-story, 100-room house with 181 members of his family.

He heads a local Christian religious sect, called the "Chana," which allows polygamy. Formed in June 1942, the sect believes it will soon be ruling the world with Christ and has a membership of around 400 families.

Hindu, India's dominant religion, does not allow polygamy, but the nation's laws allow Muslim men to have more than one wife.

India, the world’s second-most populous country behind China, has a birth rate of 2.6 babies for each woman. That pace is expected to keep India's population rising. Analysts say India will reach 1.53 billion population by 2030, when it will surpass China as No. 1 in population.

The United Nations Population Fund, which predicts the world population will reach 7 billion by Oct. 31, says that the world will be on its way to 9 billion 20 years later.

- msnbc.com editors Natalia Jimenez and Jim Gold, with wire service reports.

See more posts and images related to the seven billion population milestone

Reuters

A farmer takes water from a mostly dried-up pond to soak his vegetable field on the outskirts of Yingtan, China, on Dec. 10, 2007.

Akhtar Soomro / Reuters

Two-year-old Saghar, a flood victim, takes a bath in a relief camp in Sukkur, Pakistan, on Sept. 7, 2010.

No resource is more precious and vital than water.

As the world population grows to 7 billion on Oct. 31, as projected by the United Nations Population Fund, the amount of water available per person shrinks.

Yet the per-person consumption of resources — especially in industrialized nations — grows exponentially, analysts warn. Shifting rainfall patterns exacerbate the problem.

Marcio Silva / Amazona Spress via Reuters

A woman carries water she drew from a pool of a drying tributary of the Amazon River as the season drought worsens to one of the worst in recent years, in Parana do Paraua, Brazil, on Nov. 24, 2009. After a rainy season that caused some of the worst flooding in recent history, the seasonal drought that followed proved to be especially bad as well.

The International Water Management Institute (IMWI) predicts that by 2025 about 1.8 billion people will live in places suffering from severe water scarcity. Many already do.

"Take the Horn of Africa for example: Somalia's population has risen roughly fivefold since the middle of the 20th century," Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, said at an Oct. 17 meeting of academics. "Precipitation is down roughly 25 percent over the last quarter century. There's a devastating famine under way right now after two years of complete failure of rains, and [there is] the potential that this is entering a period of long-term climate change."

Amit Dave / Reuters

People gather to get water from a well in the village of Natwarghad, India, on June 1, 2003, in the midst of a severe drought. Dams, wells and ponds went dry across the western and northern parts of Gujarat, forcing people to wait for hours around village ponds for the irregular state-run water tankers to show up as the temperature soared to over 110 degrees.

Conflicts over water shortages could play out as class warfare as the rich commandeer the water and other resources of the poor, Upmanu Lall, director of the Columbia Water Center, warned at the academics meeting.

But solutions are possible.

“Nations need to find ways to deliver food security across regions facing water scarcity and ensure that poor farmers who underpin global food production are resilient enough to cope with future challenges,” IMWI says.

Ahmad Masood / Reuters

An Afghan man pushes a hand cart with water containers near a public water pump in Kabul on Jan. 13, 2010.

Increasing agricultural productivity through effective management of water resources not only helps eliminate hunger, it also leads to long-term increases in rural wealth and lifts poor farmers beyond subsistence-level farming, IMWI says.

"There's quite a bit of land that could produce food if we had the water to go with it," said Lester Brown, an environmental analyst who heads the Earth Policy Institute in Washington. "It's water that's becoming the real constraint."

- msnbc.com editors Natalia Jimenez and Jim Gold, with wire service reports.

See more posts and images related to the seven billion population milestone

Eliana Aponte / Reuters

A resident shows the water she gets at her home in a poor neighborhood in Mexico City on Dec. 17, 2009. A lack of rainfall and the growing needs of a thirsty capital city full of leaky pipes is draining the many lakes that once covered Mexico City's vast urban plain. City residents know their water by the brownish color as it leaves the spout.

Carlos Barria / Reuters

Women walk in the financial area of Pudong in Shanghai, April 26, 2011.

China remains the world's most populous nation with 1.34 billion people and has grown to No. 2 behind the United States in economic power, but its own policies contribute to potential changes in both rankings.

When the world welcomes its 7 billionth person on Oct. 31, as the United Nations Population Fund predicts, China will still be home to more than one in every seven inhabitants of the planet.

But changing demographics brought on largely by birth-limit rules may slow China's growth, analysts say. The country allows urban women to have only a single child; rural women, two. That's fewer than the 2.1 overall necessary to keep the population count level.

India, with a higher rate of 2.6 births per woman, by 2030 may overtake China as No. 1 in population.

Carlos Barria / Reuters

Students attend their college graduation ceremony at Fudan University in Shanghai on July 2, 2011. A 2011 study by the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences paints a rosy picture of graduate employment, saying only 6.7 percent of 2010 graduates with four-year or vocational degrees were still looking for work six months after leaving campus. The vast majority had found jobs or were pursuing further studies. Unemployment was down almost 3 percent from 2009.

China's birth policy also has made the nation one of the most rapidly aging countries in the world, analysts say. The demographic change may be an Achilles' heel in China's economic growth as well as its population count, CNBC reported.

China over the past 30 years became the world's major manufacturing center. Its export-dependent prosperity lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and into the middle class.

However, a global economic downturn in 2009 reduced demand for Chinese exports. To help keep the economy rolling along, China's 12th Five-Year Plan adopted in March 201 emphasized the need to increase domestic consumption in order to make the economy less dependent on exports.

"The more Chinese population ages, that's more of a headwind against internal consumption," Michael Yoshikami, Founder & CEO of YCMNET Advisors, told CNBC. "There're studies out that suggest the Chinese aging population is going to skyrocket particularly as a result of the one child rule."

Carlos Barria / Reuters

A boy sleeps as he is pushed in a shopping cart at an IKEA store in downtown Shanghai on May 11, 2011. China's headline consumer price inflation slowed to 5.3 percent in the year to April from 5.4 percent in March, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

China counted its people age 60 and up at 178 million, or 12.5 percent of the total population, in 2010. That figure is expected to double by 2030.

In comments published Oct. 22, Chinese Premier Wen Jibao addressed issues such as inflation, housing costs, weakened demand from rich economies, and the pressure to secure jobs for millions of university students and rural migrants. 

"Currently, economic growth is slowing and external demand is falling, and we should make employment even more of a priority in economic and social development, doing our utmost to expand employment," Wen told officials in Guangxi, a poorer region next to export-driven Guangdong province, the official People's Daily reported.

Those efforts would include "ensuring an appropriate rate of economic growth" and supporting labor-intensive industries, small businesses and private firms, he said.

- msnbc.com editors Natalia Jimenez and Jim Gold, with wire service reports.

See our slideshow: China's booming middle class

See more posts and images related to the seven billion population milestone

Carlos Barria / Reuters

A man looks at the Huaxi village, China, on Dec. 2, 2010. In China's richest village of Huaxi, a booming market town of 36,000 in the affluent eastern province of Jiangsu, every family has at least one house, two cars and $250,000 in the bank.

Cheryl Ravelo / Reuters

Babies lie on a bed in the maternity ward of the government run Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila on June 1, 2011. The ward, the busiest in the country, sees an average of 60 births a day. The Philippines' population growth rate of around 2.0 percent is above Southeast Asia's average of around 1.7 percent, with an estimated 200 babies born every hour.

The world population is going through a growth spurt, but its pace varies widely from country to country due in large part to differences in birth rates. Some nations see declines while others see sharp increases.

The United Nations Population Fund estimates the world population will reach 7 billion on Oct. 31.

Women on average are having 2.5 babies each, according to UN data. That’s still above the population replacement level of 2.1 but just half of the five babies apiece they averaged in 1950, when the world population was 2.6 billion. It reached 6 billion in 1998.

In the Philippines, with a population of 101.8 million, the 2011 birth rate is 3.19 babies per woman, says the CIA World Fact Book. Hospitals estimate about 200 births an hour across the country.

Cheryl Ravelo / Reuters

Women await weigh-ins during prenatal checks at the Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila on June 6, 2011. The Philippines lacks a national policy on birth control and access to modern family planning methods frowned upon by the powerful Catholic Church. Those factors and others led to the country's population ballooning to more than 100 million, according to various government and private sector estimates. The Philippines is the second-most populous nation in the region after Indonesia.

Cheryl Ravelo / Reuters

A woman uses her cell phone while her baby lies on top of her inside the maternity ward of the Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila on June 1, 2011.

The world’s highest birth rate is in Niger, at 7.60 children per woman, according to the World Fact Book; the lowest is Macau, at 0.92. The United States rate is 2.06.

These rates affect a nation's population, which also changes due to longevity rates, immigration and other factors.

"Fertility begins to decline slowly in most developing countries, and then it declines fast, around three to four children, and then it slows down again," Gerhard Heilig, the UN chief of population estimates and projections, told Life's Little Mysteries.

Cheryl Ravelo / Reuters

The maternity ward of the Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila is crowded on June 1, 2011.

As the world hits a population milestone, Western Europe, Japan and Russia are experiencing low birth rates and aging populations leading to economic squeezes and population declines.

Money-tight Spain, with a 1.47 birth rate, can no longer afford $3,000-per-newborn government grants that were used to encourage families to boost the nation's birth rate.

In Japan, with a 1.21 birth rate, fewer working-age people will be around to support the elderly. Russia, at 1.42, faces a similar problem and has seen its population fall 6 percent since the mid-1990s.

Cheryl Ravelo / Reuters

A baby lies on a scale inside the maternity ward of the Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila on June 1, 2011.

China’s birth rate has fallen to 1.5 under three decades of strict family planning rules that limited urban families to one child and rural families to two.

India, the world’s second-most populous country behind China, has a 2.6 birth rate expected to keep its population rising for years to come.

- msnbc.com editors Natalia Jimenez and Jim Gold, with wire service reports.

See more posts and images related to the seven billion population milestone

David Gray / Reuters

A garbage collector walks atop a massive pile of garbage at the Bloemendhal dump in central Colombo, Sri Lanka, on April 23, 2009.

Will the sheer scale of 7 billion people living on the planet doom human existence to extinction?

Not likely, many scientists say, but they do worry about how many people a disturbed and soiled Earth will support.

The United Nations Population Fund predicts not only that the planet’s population will reach 7 billion by Oct. 31, but another billion will be here by 2025, and the total will reach 10 billion before the end of the century.

China Daily via Reuters

A worker cleans away dead fish at a lake in Wuhan, central China's Hubei province, on July 11, 2007. More than 110,000 pounds of fish died due to pollution and hot weather, local media reported.

Beawiharta Beawiharta / Reuters

Deforestation is evident on Indonesia's Sumatra island on Aug. 5, 2010. Indonesia, like Brazil, is on the front line of efforts to curb deforestation, a major contributor to mankind's greenhouse gas emissions that scientists blame for heating up the planet.

All those people will need water, food, clothing, shelter, energy – all of which take resources to create or distribute and which can foul the environment as they’re processed and used up.

In 1798, when the world’s population was close to 1 billion, British-born economist Thomas Malthus wrote, "The power of population is so superior to the power of the Earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race."

Malthus did not take into account the then-coming industrial age and people’s inventions and ingenuity that meant more efficient use of Earth’s resources. However, population growth could be catching up to problems it creates.

Reinhard Krause / Reuters

Cars jam a Beijing road on Jan. 15, 2008. More than 400,000 new cars, or more than 1,000 a day, hit the roads in China's capital in 2006, state media said.

Asahi Shimbun / Reuters

Medical staff use a Geiger counter to screen a woman for possible radiation exposure at a public welfare center in Hitachi City, Japan, on March 16, 2011. The woman tested negative for radiation exposure after she was evacuated from an area within 12.4 miles of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which leaked radiation when it was badly damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

Modern scientists warn that the Earth’s climate is warming and access to clean water is dwindling. Oil spills contaminate beaches and oceans; poisons leach from dumped waste into soil and water; the burning of fossil fuels pumps more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than it can absorb.

New energy sources will be needed as known sources of fossil fuels are depleted or remain locked away.

Reuters

A man works at the site of a rare earth metals mine at Nancheng county, China, on Oct. 20, 2010. China reportedly produced 118,900 metric tons of rare earth in 2010, well above the 89,200 metric ton official production quota. The production figure exceeded 96 percent of global output, The Wall Street Journal reported .

Pawel Kopczynski / Reuters

Steam emerges from the cooling towers of Vattenfall's Jaenschwalde brown coal power station near Cottbus, Germany, on Dec. 2, 2009.

"Hunger and poverty are challenges we all face together - we must act now," said Pierre Ferrari, president of Heifer International, which provides cows, goats, water buffalo and other livestock to thousands of people in more than 50 countries. The charity focuses on helping the poor become self-sufficient and urges the people it helps to go on to train others.

"Our global agricultural system can feed 7 billion people today," Ferrari said. "It is a matter of equity and distribution."

"The real issue to be faced is the next 30 years when another 2 billion people will be with us," he said. "It is forecasted that the global food supply will need to double to meet the needs of the global population.  The small holder farmer (650 million of them) produces 70 percent of the world food today."

Heifer is an example of a non-government organization that works to improve agricultural productivity.

But will such efforts be enough?

"The constraints of the biosphere are fixed," Harvard University sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson wrote in his 2002 book, "The Future of Life."

As reported by Life’s Little Mysteries, Wilson predicted the Earth’s resources could be stretched to support a population of 10 billion, just about where UN population estimators say growth will level out by the end of the century.

- msnbc.com editors Natalia Jimenez and Jim Gold, with wire service reports.

See more posts and images related to the seven billion population milestone

Michael B. Watkins/U.S. Navy via Reuters

Oil is seen on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico in an aerial view of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill off the coast of Mobile, Alabama, on May 6, 2010.

Paulo Santos / Reuters

Roman Catholic pilgrims press together while following the image of the local saint, Our Lady of Nazareth, as it is paraded Oct. 11, 2009, during the annual Cirio de Nazare procession, the country's biggest religious festival, in Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon River. More than 1 million Catholics, many from communities along the Amazon River's tributaries, converged on Our Lady of Nazareth basilica to participate in the event.

Reuters

People crowd in a swimming pool to escape a summer heat wave July 4, 2010, in Suining, China.

As the world population explodes, so does the growth of cities, especially in Asia and Africa.

Globally, one in two people lives in an urban area, a milestone reached in 2007, says the United Nations Population Fund, the agency that predicts world population will reach 7 billion on Oct. 31.

In about 35 years, two out of three people will live in cities and towns, the agency predicts.

Nicky Loh / Reuters

Motorists crowd at a junction during rush hour in Taipei on Oct. 29, 2009. There are around 8.8 million motorcycles and 4.8 million cars on Taiwan's roads. Nearly all motor vehicles and inhabitants are squeezed into a third of the island's area, resulting in high concentrations of polluting emissions in the places where people live and work, according to official reports.

Morris Macmatzen / Reuters

Sunbathers and roofed wicker beach chairs line up along the beach on the bay of Travemuende, a popular holiday resort at the Baltic sea near the northern German city of Luebeck, on Aug. 5, 2007.

The fastest growth is seen in sub-Saharan Africa, which has the world's highest birthrates and deepest poverty. The regional population of nearly 900 million could reach 2 billion in 40 years.

"Most of that growth will be in Africa's cities, and in those cities it will almost all be in slums where living conditions are horrible," said John Bongaarts of the Population Council, a New York-based research organization.

Akintunde Akinleye / Reuters

A man walks on a pedestrian bridge overlooking traffic in Lagos, Nigeria, on Sept. 18, 2006.

Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos, with an estimated 15 million people and a 6 percent growth rate, is expected to overtake Cairo soon as Africa's largest city. Problems with traffic congestion, sanitation and water supplies are staggering; a recent article in UN-Habitat said two-thirds of the residents live in poverty.

India is Asia’s second-largest country with 1.2 billion people, but by 2030 it may surpass No. 1 China, now with 1.34 billion people.

Reuters

A view of a residential building in Shanghai on March 18, 2009.

Reuters

Job-seekers crowd a job fair in Wuhan, China, on March 17, 2007. Unemployment could be long-term trouble for China, with the number of jobless urban residents alone exceeding 15 million, the China Information News quoted a senior official as saying, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Across India, teeming slums, congested streets, and crowded trains and trams are testimony to the country's burgeoning population.

At 6 p.m. on a typical evening in Mumbai, India's financial hub, 7 million commuters swarm out of their offices and head to railway stations for rides home on an overtaxed suburban rail network. Every few minutes, as a train enters the station, the crowd surges forward.

Every ride is a scramble. Each car is jam-packed; sometimes, riders die when they lose their foothold while clinging to the doors.

- msnbc.com editors Natalia Jimenez and Jim Gold, with wire service reports.

For more information: Beijing's 'hubs' haven't curbed population pressures

See more images and posts related to the seven billion population milestone

K.K. Arora / Reuters

Hindu devotees travel on a crowded passenger train to take part in the "Guru Purnima" festival near Mathura, India on July 24, 2010.

Rajanish Kakade / AP

A newborn baby boy is weighed on a scale at a government hospital in Mumbai, India on Oct. 5. Already the second most populous country with 1.2 billion people, India is expected to overtake China around 2030 when its population soars to an estimated 1.6 billion.

The world is about to get a little more crowded.

By the end of October, it is expected that there will be 7 billion people living on the planet, according to the U.N. Population Fund. We are hitting this milestone, even though Western Europe, Japan and Russia are currently facing population declines as a result of low birthrates and aging populations. The declines cause serious concerns about who will care for and support the elderly, with a smaller number of people in the work force contributing to taxes and welfare.

While India and China have the largest populations, it is sub-Saharan Africa that has the highest birthrates. Quickly growing countries like Nigeria, Uganda and Burundi are already struggling with the area’s limited food and water resources, combined with high poverty levels.

For more information see: 7 population milestones for 7 billion people

Ng Han Guan / AP

Children play at a square in Beijing on Feb. 3, 2010. For now, China remains the most populous nation, with 1.34 billion people. In the past decade it added 73.9 million, more than the population of France or Thailand. Nonetheless, its growth has slowed dramatically and the population is projected to start shrinking in 2027. By 2050, according to some demographers, it will be smaller than it is in 2011.

Alvaro Barrientos / AP

Two elderly men sit on benches in the small town of La Puebla de Arganzon, northern Spain on Oct. 9. Spain used to give parents 2,500 euros ($3,300) for every newborn child to encourage families to reverse the country's low birth rate. But the checks stopped coming with Spain's austerity measures, raising the question of who will pay the bills to support the elderly in the years ahead.

Rafiq Maqbool / AP

Commuters hang on the outside of a local train in Mumbai, India on Oct. 10. Already the second most populous country with 1.2 billion people, India is expected to overtake China around 2030 when its population soars to an estimated 1.6 billion.

Luca Bruno / AP

A man uses a cane as he walks among other people through an open air market in Milan, Italy on Oct. 12. In 2010, more Italians died than were born for the fourth consecutive year according to the national statistics agency. Italy's population nonetheless grew slightly to 60.6 million due to immigration, a highly charged issue across Europe. Italy's youth minister Giorgia Meloni said earlier this year that measures to reverse the birth rate require "millions in investment" but that the resources aren't available.

Andy Wong / AP

Tourists visit Tiananmen Gate on China's National Day in Beijing on Oct. 1. For now, China remains the most populous nation, with 1.34 billion people. In the past decade it added 73.9 million, more than the population of France or Thailand. Nonetheless, its growth has slowed dramatically and the population is projected to start shrinking in 2027. By 2050, according to some demographers, it will be smaller than it is in 2011.

Godfrey Olukya / AP

Ahmed Kasadha, center foreground, on the porch of his house in Iganga, Uganda, with one of his wives and six of his 14 children on Oct. 1. A polygamist, Kasadha says large families are a sign of success and God's blessing. His father had 25 children, and he wants his own family to get bigger. Uganda, and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, have some of the world's highest birthrates - a point of concern as the world's population hits the 7 billion mark on Oct. 31, 2011 according to the U.N. Population Fund.

Rajanish Kakade / AP

The Dharavi slum in Mumbai, India at twilight on Oct. 9. Already the second most populous country with 1.2 billion people, India is expected to overtake China around 2030 when its population soars to an estimated 1.6 billion.