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A baby girl born in the Philippines has been declared the world’s eight billionth person as United Nations confirmed that the population passed the landmark figure yesterday.
Baby Vinice Mabansag was born at the Dr Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Tondo, Manila on 15 November and was chosen to mark the milestone.
The Filipino Commission on Population and Development gave Vinice – who was welcomed into the world at 1.29am with officials standing by – the symbolic title.
A baby girl born in the Philippines has been declared the world’s eight billionth person yesterday
Baby Vinice Mabansag was born at the Dr Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Tondo, Manila
While the UN has not officially declared her, or anyone, the ‘eight-billionth person to be born’, it did so for previous population milestones.
In a sign of how quickly the world’s population has expanded – from 2.5 billion in 1950 to eight billion today – the newborns who represented the five, six and seven-billionth people were named in 1987, 1999 and 2011 respectively.
UN officials came up with the idea to name the landmark babies after predicting that five billion people would be surpassed on July 11 1987.
Despite demographers rejecting the idea as ‘ignorant’, one official told the BBC that they were determined to go ahead with it anyway.
One of the ‘seven-billionth babies’ was Sadia Sultana Oishee, born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2011 (left). Adnan Mevic (right), born in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999, was declared the world’s six-billionth baby
The ‘five-billionth baby’ was ‘christened’ at a hospital in Zagreb, Croatia on the projected date.
Fast-forward to 1999 and Adnan Mevic, born in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was declared the world’s six-billionth baby by none other than UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Adnan said that the title has brought him a lot of attention throughout his life, even giving him the chance to meet his hero Christiano Ronaldo.
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He spoke to mark yesterday’s milestone, saying he was stunned by the huge rise in births since his own.
Adnan Mevic, born in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999, was declared the world’s six-billionth baby by none other than UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
‘That’s really a lot,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how our beautiful planet will cope.’
But, he added, the population in his native country is dwindling as young people emigrate and the birth rate declines.
One of the ‘seven-billionth babies’ was Sadia Sultana Oishee, born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2011.
The little girl arrived one minute after midnight and was greeted by camera crews and local officials. She now dreams of being a doctor, her family told the BBC.
The UN Population Division said that the population will continue to grow in the decades to come, with life expectancy set to increase to an average of 77.2 years by 2050.
The increase in life expectancy, as well as the number of people of childbearing age, has meant the UN predicts the world’s population will continue growing to about 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and reach a peak of about 10.4 billion in the 2080s.
Adnan spoke to mark yesterday’s milestone, saying he was stunned by the huge rise in births since his own
But, the UN has warned that population growth rate is slowing.
After a peak in the early 1960s, it has decelerated dramatically to below 1 per cent in 2020, Rachel Snow of the UN Population Fund said.
‘We’ve reached a stage in the world where the majority of countries and the majority of people in this world are living in a country that is below replacement fertility,’ or roughly 2.1 children per woman, she said.
While eight billion may sound like a mighty milestone, the growth rate is actually at its slowest since 1950, and dropped below one per cent for the first time in 2020.
It has also taken us 12 years to get to this point from seven billion people, as fertility rates are now below the amount required to maintain the population in much of the world, or the ‘replacement rate’.
