On Monday, the world welcomed its 7 billionth person. The implications of population growth are similarly staggering in number, but here are five of the more important things to know about the growing world community.

There might not be 7 billion of us. Yet.

The October 31st date was chosen by the United Nations Population Fund, and it’s somewhat symbolic. "There is a window of uncertainty of at least six months before and six months after the 31 October date for the world population to reach seven billion," UN population estimates chief Gerhard Heilig told the BBC. However, the crux of the matter—the ever-increasing world population and the problems that come with it—stands.

Human being No. 7,000,000,000 is probably poor—and it's likely the parents didn't plan the pregnancy.

The developing world acted as the engine for most of the last decade's population growth. It’s home to the world’s seven fastest-growing cities, according to Foreign Policy. As such, it’s attracting the attention of policymakers and crystal-ball-gazers alike. Many, like the Worldwatch Institute’s Robert Engelman, propose extending access to contraceptives and encouraging smaller family size to curb population-related problems, though a recent Economist article says that this would only have a modest effect in the face of scarce world resources.

Sure, resource scarcity is a problem, but maybe it doesn’t have to be.

Not all commentators are equally pessimistic about continuing population growth. Some of the most basic problems, like access to food and water, might really be problems of efficiency rather than scarcity. Global Envision contributor Ben Osborn recently wrote about a study by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research that showed that given proper integration and storage of water resources, no one would have to go thirsty. On the food front, a scientific study published in Nature showed that proper agricultural reforms “could increase global food availability by 100–180%,” more than enough to meet the needs of our growing population.

The antidote to population could be migration.

Ensuring good quality of life for the earth’s inhabitants goes beyond just food and water. The UN’s State of the World Population 2011 report identifies migration as a trend that can be used to help aid in economic development. Wealthy countries with declining fertility rates could provide job opportunities for workers disenfranchised in their overpopulated home countries. At the same time, migration is a hot-button issue for developed nations that may not be so keen to open their borders. The report also cites increased access to education as a key factor in reducing population growth and providing better opportunities for youth in developing nations.

Maybe we should all just learn to stop worrying and love the population bomb.

Many fear rapid population growth in a world with limited resources, but given the proper policies it might not have to be so scary. Since there’s no “undo” button for world population, perhaps the best question to ask in light of the 7 billion marker is “How can we make the best of it?”

Want to know where you fit into the 7 billion? Check out The BBC’s “What’s Your Number” tool.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

The Developing Worlds Educated face Tough Choices after Graduation. Photo: Farhad Zalmai for Mercy Corps

“Brain drain” has long bothered policymakers in poor countries says The Economist. But recent migration studies and a touch of classical economics suggest the better phrase is “brain gain."

A country that sends its most skilled workers abroad has three key advantages:

Remittances (money sent home from abroad) go up. In 2010, workers remitted $325 billion, equaling the GDP of Switzerland, largely from developed to developing countries. According to The Economist, skilled workers often find better job opportunities abroad in richer countries, multiplying their income several fold and creating the potential for additional remittances.

Émigrés return with more marketable skills. Increasing numbers of skilled migrants eventually return home with new skills, new contacts, and a pot of savings to invest after several years abroad. In one Romanian study, returning migrants earned 12 to 14 percent more than similar people who stayed home.

There is a higher incentive for education and skill development. Research from Fiji and the Cape Verde Islands show that the general level of education in a population often rises when workers see potential for immigration to “greener pastures”. People have an increased incentive to pick up skills which remain useful if they decide not to migrate after all.

Of course, emigrating tends to benefit the migrants themselves. Otherwise, they would be less likely to leave home.

"Brain gain" parallels English political economist David Ricardo’s law of “comparative advantage” -- stating that two countries with advantages in different areas are better off trading. Richer countries offer more quality employment opportunities for skilled labor while, according to two North African studies, skilled laborers remaining in developing countries often face underemployment or unemployment. Migration across borders -- swapping workers for revenue -- balances these two forces. Some studies claim the world would add $39 trillion to global growth over 25 years if labor became truly mobile.

A skilled immigrant moving from the developing to developed world could actually benefit both nations:

• The destination-country adds a skilled worker, boosting output.
• The worker's annual income rises -- say, from $10,000 (at home) to $50,000 (abroad).
• If the worker remits only 25 percent of his or her income, then losing that worker abroad actually raised the individuals contribution to GDP from $10,000 to $12,500.

Migration does create winners and losers says The Economist. The emotional toll on families continually forced to relocate can be high, though lessening with new technology. And some skilled workers (educated and trained at the expense of cash-strapped governments) do not return much to their poorer homelands.

However, the benefits of brain gain are increasingly thought of as outweighing the costs of brain drain. The Economist aptly sums it up: "Letting educated people go where they want, looks like the brainy option."

The interior of a number 2 subway train in NYC. Photo: Kevin H. (flickr)

Jeton Qallaku, a Bronx resident, sends about three percent of his $60,000 salary back to his parents and sister in Kosovo each year. Qallaku's family mostly uses these remittance payments to keep up with their water, sewage, and electricity bills.

Jeton immigrated to New York from Kosovo in 1996, and has been sending money home ever since. Kosovo is one of the most remittance-dependent countries in the world. In 2008, remittances from Kosovar Albanian migrants accounted for 13 percent of the country's economy, according to World Bank figures. In that same year, global remittances totaled $308 million, a record high. But in the past year and a half, remittances have taken a hit as the world reels from the economic crisis.

Jounalism students at Columbia University teamed up with GlobalPost.com to profile New York area migrants to learn how the economic crisis is affecting their capacity to send money home. The students captured stories from migrants while traveling along New York's #2 subway line, which connects Brooklyn to the Bronx. Jeton's story is one of many included in this project, entitled "Payback: Remittances in New York City," but the project also features stories of migrants from Ghana, Haiti, Kosovo Albania, Mexico, Yemen, Pakistan and China. These very personal stories are told through video content and interactive maps.

Dubai's Construction Skyline at Night. Photo: twocentsworth (flickr)

The financial crisis is crimping construction in the Middle East and other places that had been experiencing a building boom, Der Spiegel reports.

Developers in Dubai — once synonymous with high profit margins and high-concept architecture — have delayed lavish developments, including a chain of palm-tree-shaped islands and a $600-million Trump hotel and tower.

The slowdown has affected the migrant workers who make up the core of Dubai's workforce, 43 percent of whom call India home. The Times of India reported that thousands of laid-off construction workers have applied for visa cancellations.

Der Spiegel says developers elsewhere in the Middle East, namely Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, are scaling back as oil prices fall.

And in Moscow, developers halted construction on what was to be Europe's tallest skyscraper. The Russian economy is "a house of cards that is built on Western loans and which is now collapsing," German architect Peter Schweger told Der Spiegel.

What is the best way to measure economic development? Most economists still focus on gross domestic product (GDP) or gross national income (GNI) per capita. Bhutan has inspired some to focus on "gross national happiness" (see my earlier post on Bhutan and GNH here). Researchers at the Center for Global Development are now proposing a new measure: income per natural.

Michael Clemens and Lant Pritchett use income per natural to measure the average annual income of all individuals who are born in a given country, regardless of where they live at any given time. According to their calculations, almost 43 million people live in countries where income per natural is 50 percent higher than GDP per capita, and for over 1 billion people the difference is greater than 10 percent. Clemens and Pritchett argue that this new measure recognizes that, for many, emigration is an important means towards increased welfare.

The bottom line: migration is one of the most important sources of poverty reduction for a large portion of the developing world. If economic development is defined as rising human well being, then a residence-neutral measure of well-being emphasizes that crossing international borders is not an alternative to economic development, it is economic development.

Can migrant workers help to improve an economy? An article in the Economist says they can. According to the National Research Council with a high school education a migrant worker can contribute as much as 105,000 dollars in taxes, along with the contribution of their children once they are employed.

Migrants need health, skills, determination, a willingness to take risks and some entrepreneurial nous to take the plunge, which marks them out as special people. Moreover, migrants increasingly alleviate specific labour shortages in rich economies. Some economies could not function without foreign workers.

While the immigration debate in the United States is largely focused on the U.S.-Mexico border, an article from National Geographic looks a bit farther to the south. An estimated 400,000 migrants from Central America cross the border into Mexico every year, and though some stay to work in Mexico, most are headed for the U.S.

The economic prosperity of the U.S. has a strong pull effect on the Latin American poor, and the money that migrant workers send home to their families is having an increasingly large impact on their national economies. In Honduras, for example, remittances sent home from the U.S. made up one-fifth of the country’s gross national income in 2006.

“There is no solution to this,” a former Chiapas state official said wearily, after ticking off a list of southern border upgrade programs that have fizzled into ineffectiveness over the past decade. “You can put all the control measures down there that you want, but it’s not going to be fixed. The solution is to eliminate poverty.”