Every sixth person in the world at the beginning of the next millennium, it adds, will be an Indian. A billion people have been added in just 12 years, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)'s `State of the World Population - 1999' report, released on Wednesday by Michael Vlassof, UNFPA representative in India, says.

While global population would reach six billion next month, India's population is fast approaching the one billion mark. On the plus side, women are having fewer children than ever before and population growth has slowed -- from 2.4 per cent to 1.3 per cent in 30 years.

But global population is still rising by about 78 million people each year. Half of the world is still under 25 and there are over a billion young people between 15 and 24 -- the parents of the nextgeneration.

Most of this population growth is taking place in the world's poorest and least-prepared countries, and the fastest growing regions are sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of South Asia and Western Asia.

Meanwhile, population growth has slowed or stopped in Europe, North America and Japan. The US is the only industrialised country where large population increases are still projected, largely as a result of immigration.