Answer the questions （根据短文内容回答下列问题）
In the
time it takes you to read this sentence, the population of the Earth will have grown
by 10 people. That may not sound much, but it is about 14,000 people an hour. That
is the same as adding most of the population of Germany to the world every year!
Most of these new people are born in developing countries. These countries
are found in much of Africa, South America, and parts of Asia. In the developed
countries of Europe and North America, the population is growing very slowly. This
is because women in these countries have, on average, only one or two children.
In the developing countries, many women have five or more children. In 1950, around
one quarter of the world's population lived in the developed countries. By 2050,
these countries will be the home to only around one tenth of the world's people.
In the developing countries, more than one billion people already live below
the poverty line (贫困线).These people don't have enough food to eat and they live in poor housing;
children get little or no time at school and suffer from many kinds of diseases.
The United Nations (UN) tries to guess population growth. At the beginning
of the 21st century, the world's population was around six billion people. The UN
has said that the world's population will level off at 12. 5 billion people by the
year 2100. Other people think the world's population will continue to grow, reaching
14 billion people before it becomes stable or even falls.
