7 billionth person on the planet has North links?

Whangarei boxing coach Tim Bowman has been seeing stars since his daughter Carlee gave birth to a girl who could be the seven billionth person on the planet.

The population milestone could have been reached when Carlee gave birth to her first daughter, Kora Jade, by caesarean surgery at Waitakere Hospital in Auckland yesterday morning.

With the world's population growing by 200,000 a day it's hard to pin down exactly where and when the seventh billionth child was born.

But an Auckland newspaper article yesterday lining Kora Jade up for the honour was all Mr Bowman needed to give his grand-daughter special status.

"I'm a bit blown away. You don't really think about how many people there are in the world," he said.

"It's unbelievable. It's no wonder we are all fighting for jobs."

Mr Bowman, a roofing contractor, lives above the gym in Robert St where he coaches boxing in my spare time.

His wife, Dianne, is at Carlee's home in Te Atatu, Auckland, minding Kora Jade's two brothers - Cole, 8, and Tait, 1 - while mum is in hospital and dad, Rhys Peers, is circulating between home, hospital and his job as a glass worker.

Mr Bowman, 52, said he and Dianne had four children - two boys and two girls - with 30-year-old Carlee the eldest. And they now have six grandchildren.

He expected to be driving to Auckland at the weekend when, if Carlee was fit and well he believed a drink of bubbly would be in order to celebrate the arrival of the seven billionth baby.

The world population was estimated to have hit one billion about 1804. It was two billion in 1927, three billion in 1959, four billion in 1974, five billion in 1987, and six billion in 1999.

In the early 1950s the global average life expectancy was about 48 years, which has increased to about 68 in the past decade. Infant deaths dropped from 133 per 1000 births in the 1950s to 46 in 2010. Women today are having half as many children as those in the past. The global average is now 2.5 children per woman and is continuing to fall.

But the world's population is still expected to reach 10 billion by the end of this century.