From New America Media -- China Daily USA (posted October 28, 2011): The world's population [was] expected to reach 7 billion on Monday [October 31, 2011], four years later than once predicted largely thanks to China's family planning policy, according to the country's top population experts. Population growth has rocketed. It took just 13 years for 1 billion more people to live on the planet, yet only at the dawn of the 19th century did a billion people first inhabit the Earth, according to a report by the United Nations Population Fund.