Matthew Ross Winkler, nephew of one of our writers, became a statistic at 3:42 p.m. on May 12, 1998. With the deft help of a surgeon he left his mother’s womb and joined Earth’s ever swelling population.

The baby was normal.

He had ten fingers, ten toes, a vigorous pulse, and even more vigorous vocal cords.

Yet, in a larger sense, this Connecticut child was anything but normal. Ninety percent of the one hundred forty million children born on Earth each year grow up in the developing world, some of them in acute poverty. Many can expect decades less of life than the 76 years projected for Matthew Ross.

Explore the complexities of human population in this newest Millennium offering as veteran journalists take you beyond statistics—into the stories of our rapidly reproducing species.