Thomas Malthus
An Essay on the principle of Population
Thomas Malthus, in the early 19th century published an essay on the principle of population as it affects the future improvement of the society with remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers. He criticized the views of the Utopians who believed that life could and would definitely improve for humans on earth. Populations are growing most rapidly where such growth can be afforded the least — where pollution, resource shortages, and environmental damage create additional stresses on the ability of governments to meet the basic food, clothing, and shelter needs of their populations. The relationship between human population growth and the availability of natural resources has …show more content…
occupied the minds of many thinkers since at least the 18th century. However, it was Thomas Robert Malthus who for the first time gave a systematic analysis of population and resources.
Thomas Robert Malthus published his Essay on the Principle of Population as a response to the Utopians, based on the facts of the poverty he saw around him. As he saw it, there was one simple reason why the Utopian ideas could never work: there could never be enough food to support such an idealistic society. Human misery and suffering were practically inevitable.
Malthus began his argument with two postulates: "First, That food is necessary to the existence of man. Secondly, that the passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state" .In other words, man will continue to eat, and man will continue to reproduce. Assuming these two conditions, Malthus goes on to state the core of his argument within three short paragraphs:
"Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers wills shed the immensity of the first power in comparison to the second.
"By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal.
"This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind."
A society of the type the Utopians predicted, without hunger or poverty, was impossible. Mankind will continue to reproduce until he consumes all available food supply, and then will only be prevented from expanding further by simple hunger. Therefore:
"The natural inequality of the two powers of population and of production in the earth, and that great law of our nature which must constantly keep their effects equal, form the great difficulty that to me appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society. And it appears, therefore, to be decisive against the possible existence of a society, all the members of which should live in ease, happiness, and comparative leisure; and feel no anxiety about providing the means of subsistence for themselves and families.
"Consequently, if the premises are just, the argument is conclusive against the perfectibility of the mass of mankind."
This 'conclusive argument ' by no means settled the debate; on the contrary, Malthus ' grim predictions provoked a storm of rebuttals, which damaged but never quite destroyed the credibility of his theory.
His two initial postulates, that man must eat and will continue to reproduce, Malthus felt needed little defence. Obviously, a person must eat in order to survive, and despite some speculation by the Utopian William Godwin that the sexual instinct may eventually diminish, Malthus saw little sign of this occurring at any point in the near future, and dismissed the possibility as mere conjecture.
Populations in general have the capacity to increase geometrically, but this capacity is almost never fully exploited. While this distinction was fully understood by Malthus, it was often misrepresented by his critics, who chose to interpret his Essay as claiming that population did, in actuality, increase in a geometric ratio. Malthus used as a hypothetical example of geometric growth a certain strain of wheat, which, under normal circumstances, produced six grains for every one planted. Therefore, this wheat had the capacity to sextuple in population every year - at which rate; a single acre would have expanded to cover the earth 's surface in fourteen years. Obviously, wheat did not reproduce at its full capacity.
However, the question of the maximum growth rate of a human population was somewhat more obscure. Humans, unlike wheat, cannot be said to simply double in number every nine months. In his attempt to find such a maximum growth rate, Malthus turned to the newly independent United States of America, using the country, with its vast surpluses of land and food, as his main evidence for the natural increase of human population in a geometric ratio.
Fortunately for Malthus, the recently-formed US government had readily available demographic statistics, in the form of census data. Strangely, however, in his first Essay on the Principle of Population, he summarized these statistics with the single phrase, "the population has been found to double itself in twenty-five years," While in later works, notably his 1830 Summary View of the Principle of Population, Malthus would make full use of this data, in the first Essay it was all but ignored.
Malthus ' proof of the growth of the food supply in an arithmetic ratio was even less supported. He dismissed the possibility of geometric growth of the food supply as "contrary to all our knowledge of the qualities of land," and proposed instead that, at most, the producer of the land could be increased every twenty-five years by an amount equal to its present production, justifying this with the statement, "The most enthusiastic speculator cannot suppose a greater increase than this," This illustrates a persistent weakness in Malthus ' "proof"; namely, his apparent love of theory and disregard for more convincing empirical evidence.
Accepting Malthus ' ideas of the relative growth rates of the population and the food supply, the next, and perhaps more important stage of his argument is the analysis of the consequences of this hypothesis. Within several twenty-five year generations, the population, if unchecked, would far surpass the available food supply: "In two centuries and a quarter, the population would be to the means of subsistence as 512 to 10: in three centuries as 4096 to 13, and in two thousand years the difference would be almost incalculable, though the produce in that time would have increased to an immense extent," .The effects of these vast differences are easy to predict for plants and animals: excess population would be cut down by lack of food. But with intelligent, reasoning human beings, the prediction is made more difficult.
Malthus’s principle of population is basically the law of supply and demand applied to the relationships between food production and population growth, which he makes clear time and again throughout the Essay. As the food supply increases, food becomes cheaper, and more children are brought into the world. As there are more mouths to feed, food becomes more expensive, thus causing stress on families, more children dying or steps taken to prevent conception itself. As food prices rise, more land is put under the plod, or greater efforts made in intensifying the production of the land itself.
While Malthus recognized that the relationships among the fertility of people and land are a good deal more complex than this simplified assertion, he maintained there is a recurrent reciprocal relationship between the two. Because of this reciprocal relationship between population and production, over the course of sociocultural evolution, both population and food production have grown in tandem. Periods of increase in food productivity, whether because of the application of technology or the expansion of cultivated land, have been met with expansions of population. Periods of stability in food production, or contraction in productivity, have been marked by the same phenomena in population level.
Because people can reproduce faster than they can increase the production of food, population must always be checked through positive or preventive means. This and nothing more, is Malthus’s “Principle of Population.” Over the course of sociocultural evolution, however, the long-term tendency has been for both productivity and population to intensify. This reciprocal growth, of course, has great effect on other parts of the sociocultural system.
In Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus proposes the principle that human populations grow exponentially (i.e., doubling with each cycle) while food production grows at an arithmetic rate (i.e. by the repeated addition of a uniform increment in each uniform interval of time). Thus, while food output was likely to increase in a series of twenty-five year intervals in the arithmetic progression 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and so on, population was capable of increasing in the geometric progression 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and so forth. This scenario of arithmetic food growth with simultaneous geometric human population growth predicted a future when humans would have no resources to survive on. To avoid such a catastrophe, Malthus urged controls on population growth.
Malthus believed that only bad could come from population growth. Population he said grows faster than food supply. This he said was because food supply can only grow arithmetically. Consequently, there is no way food supply can keep up with population growth.
Population grows exponentially, for example, 1-2-4-8-16-32-64. Food supply grows arithmetically, for example, 1-2-3-4-5-6. Therefore, population will inevitably exceed food supply.
Every growth model has variables and parameters, and Malthusian model is no exception. In this model, the variable is population, a number in which you need to take keen interest, and the parameter is population growth rate - which is known to you beforehand. While variables are known to change in course of time, parameters are mostly constant - but do have the tendency to change at times.
P(t) = P0e^rt
'P0 ' indicates Initial Population 'r ' indicates growth rate or Malthusian Parameter 't ' indicates time
Malthusian growth model can be applied when it comes to population of large animals when the same is not kept in check by the environment. Malthus first classified the checks on the growth of human population into two broad categories: positive and preventative (negative) checks. Firstly, he said population could exceed food supply only to be positively "checked" (reduced).
The positive checks were active in nature, and included such things as disease, war, and the most powerful check of all, famine. These were simple, effective, and brutal means of reducing population, the same found throughout nature. A population of plants might be pushed back by an encroaching weed, a situation analogous to war; deer may starve to death in an unusually snowy winter; and disease and plague can be imagined spreading through any conceivable population, though most especially in areas of high population density, where the disease is easily transmitted.
* Population exceeds food supply and is kept in check by war, famine, or disease. It then drops below the food supply. As the population recovers, so the cycle continues.
Alternatively, the population could pre-empt the food shortages and so slow their population growth keeping it within the limits of the food supply. Malthus called these negative checks. The chief preventive check envisaged by Malthus was that of "moral restraint", which was seen as a deliberate decision by men to refrain "from pursuing the dictate of nature in an early attachment to one woman", i.e. to marry later in life than had been usual and only at a stage when fully capable of supporting a family. These negative checks would include later marriages and abstinence from sex (Remember Malthus was writing before wide spread contraception!). People would make these decisions sub-consciously as food prices increased and standard of living fell. This, it was anticipated, would give rise to smaller families and probably to fewer families, but Malthus was strongly opposed to birth control within marriage and did not suggest that parents should try to restrict the number of children born to them after their marriage. Malthus was clearly aware that problems might arise from the postponement of marriage to a later date, such as an increase in the number of illegitimate births, but considered that these problems were likely to be less serious than those caused by a continuation of rapid population increase.
According to Malthus, similar restraints, primarily economic in nature, exist at all levels of society, though they increase in strength as one goes down the societal ladder.
A nobleman had little to prevent him from having a family; his wealth would more than likely be sufficient to support many offspring, though they would be a slight drain on his finances. However, in the case of a man well educated but only barely wealthy enough to maintain his upper-class status, the financial burden of children would perhaps be enough to drive him down into the society of common trades people, a sacrifice he may be unwilling to make. These same trades people, Malthus states, are encouraged to postpone marriage until later in life, when they have established themselves with a farm or business of their own - a late marriage, of course, would provide far less time to bear children. Stepping down further, into the ranks of the labourers, Malthus sees not only diminished social standing, but also the possibility of incurring the dreaded positive checks, as reasons to hold off marriage. At the lower ranks of society are the preventative checks strongest, as only the common man must face the real possibility of being unable to feed his children. It was here, at the low end of society, that Malthus saw the force of his checks to population acting in full force, being responsible, in the long run, for the undisputed misery and discontent of the lower
classes.
* Here, as population starts to approach the limits of the food supply, so growth slows. Malthus says this slowing is caused by delayed marriage.
Boserup, on the other hand, said that food supply would increase to accommodate population growth. As a population found that they were approaching food shortages they would identify ways of increasing supply whether through new technology, better seeds, and new farming methods. In the graph you can see that food supply will increase with population:
* Boserup argues that as the population approaches the limits of the food supply, that food supply increases as new technology improves yields.
Evidence for Malthus:
Evidence for Boserup:
Famines are frequently happening in less developed world countries. These are also often in countries that have a fast growing population.
There is enough food to feed the world - this is an indisputable fact. The problem lies with distribution - it is not always where it is needed.
Whilst a very old theory Malthus can be adapted for today if we say that increasing population cannot be sustained by the environment. The 'Club of Rome ' applies Malthusian ideas to the modern world and says that if population continues to grow our attempts to cater for it will lead to great environmental disasters. This would include global warming, oil spillage, ozone depletion, and desertification.
Famine is more likely to be the result of a natural disaster, war or the country growing too many cash crops. Cash crops are grown to sell overseas - such as cotton or tea. In times of famine the countries are often producing large cash crop harvests. They need the money to try and pay off foreign debts.
Malthusian supporters argue that everything at the moment may appear ok but this doesn 't mean we won 't face future disasters.
New farming machinery and re-organisation has greatly increased the efficiency of farms and consequently the yields.
Malthus was not content with one classification system for his checks - or, perhaps, in the overwhelming disorganization of the first Essay, dashed off at the spur of the moment as it were, he simply lost track of the fact that he had, in fact, developed two parallel systems. The second, who took a more moralistic view, divided checks into misery and vice. This system, like the first, was exclusive, all checks falling into one category or the other: "In short," stated Malthus, "it is difficult to conceive any check to population which does not come under the description of some species of misery or vice," .Roughly speaking, these were checks visited upon man by the outside world, and checks which came from man himself. Misery included such things as hunger, poverty, and disease. Malthus realized, apparently after the publication of the first Essay, that his classification of the checks to growth into vice and misery left little room for the preventative checks he discussed earlier. The decision to postpone having a family neither could be categorized neither as misery nor as vice. By the time of a Summary View, Malthus had changed his original stance, adding to vice and misery the category of moral restraint. Moral restraint, according to Malthus, was the only possible way to avoid the brutal forces of misery and vice. Marx opposed and criticized the Malthusian theory of population. According to Marx, population increase must be interpreted in the context of the capitalistic economic system. A capitalist gives to labour as wage a small share of labour’s productivity, and the capitalist himself takes the lion 's share. The capitalist introduces more and more machinery and thus increases the surplus value of labour’s productivity, which is pocketed by the capitalist. The surplus is the difference between labour’s productivity and the wage level. A worker is paid less than the value of his productivity. When machinery is introduced, unemployment increases and, consequently, a reserve army of labour are created. Under these situations, the wage level goes down further, the poor parents cannot properly rear their children and a large part of the population becomes virtually surplus. Poverty, hunger and other social ills are the result of socially unjust practices associated with capitalism. Population growth, according to Marx, is therefore not related to the alleged ignorance or moral inferiority of the poor, but is a consequence of the capitalist economic system. Marx points out that landlordism, unfavourable and high man-land ratio, uncertainty regarding land tenure system and the like are responsible for low food production in a country. Only in places where the production of food is not adequate does population growth become a problem.
As global populations rose spectacularly in the 20th century, theoretical debates over the extent and causes of the population problem expanded. Thomas Malthus and Karl Marx had set the initial stage for the world population debate, but other population theorists - including Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, Garrett Hardin, and Barry Commoner - would carry the ongoing discussion in the second half of the 20th century.
In 1968, as world population hovered above 3 billion, Paul Ehrlich authored the book The Population Bomb, a widely read publication that sold several million copies in the United States alone. Ehrlich, a biologist, maintained that the rate of population growth was outstripping agricultural growth and the capacity for renewal of Earth 's resources. Given current rates of natural increase, Ehrlich predicted "certain" demographic disaster in response to eventual food shortages and disease. In the opening to his book, he wrote: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over" and later stated that, "In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs" (Ehrlich 1968). Ehrlich argued that industrialized regions such North America and Europe would be required to undertake "mild" food rationing as starvation spread across the developing worlds of Asia, Latin America, and Africa. In a worst case scenario, he predicted that the lack of food security in the developing world would set into motion several geopolitical crises that could result in thermonuclear war. At its core, Ehrlich 's population theory contained three major elements: a rapid rate of change, a limit of some sort, and delays in perceiving the limit.
While some criticized Ehrlich 's work as simply a repetition of Malthus 's 19th century argument, Ehrlich 's most vocal opponent, economist Julian Simon, was sceptical of the more central tenets of the population bomb, particularly the definition of limits. In the 1970s, Julian Simon published two central pieces that served to galvanize the population debate: The Economics of Population Growth (1977) followed by The Ultimate Resource (1981). Simon argued that the relationship between population growth and economic growth was not as simple as Ehrlich believed, and that the extent to which population pressure impacted resources was overstated. The crux of Simon 's argument centred on his belief that Ehrlich 's limit on the availability of resources was misdirected. Simon instead argued that it was not possible to have too many people, for the only limit in determining the scarcity of resources was human imagination. People, the economist suggested, were the ultimate resource. According to Simon, ingenious, resourceful humans had the capacity to invent crops with higher yields, or to construct inexpensive, safe housing for growing populations. Simon 's other contention was that current views on population and resource issues failed to take the long view, and that frequently too short a time frame was considered when examining demographic problems.
Malthus was not blind to the grim nature of the future he forecast for mankind. Indeed, he stated in the preface to the Essay that, if proven wrong, he would "rejoice in a conviction of his error," The ideas Malthus lay out, if true, spelled the end for hopes of human perfection on earth - misery was all but inevitable. If this was the case, why, wondered the Anglican minister, had God created such a world?
The final two chapters of the Essay attempted to answer this question, what theologists and philosophers termed the Question of Evil. Given a God who was both all-powerful and completely good, how, then, could the evil which Malthus predicted was inevitable exist? Could not God have simply created a world where Malthusian factors never came into play?
The answer Malthus settled upon was that, in the divine plan, human suffering was not meaningless evil, but only a path to a greater good yet to come. A world where there was no pain would provide no stimulus to mental and spiritual growth, and would lead to a race of mankind grown lazy and stupid with lack of exertion. "The heart that has never known sorrow," said Malthus, "itself will seldom be feelingly alive to the pains and pleasures, the wants and wishes, of its fellow beings," Some suffering was necessary for true goodness to appear, argued Malthus, for in a world without evil, of what significance is good? The petty misery caused by Malthus ' checks was part of a divine plan, calculated so that, in the end, it would produce the "greatest possible quantity of good," It is ironic that an essay begun with the express purpose of disproving a hypothesis of human perfectibility on earth, and maintaining throughout that suffering is inevitable, should end with such an optimistic statement.
Despite disorganization, mathematical weaknesses, and an almost complete lack of supporting evidence, Malthus ' first Essay was still an extremely important work, with influences extending to the present day. The ideas expressed by Malthus were read by Darwin, and played a major role in Darwin 's development of the theory of evolution. Malthus ' economic ideas are visible today as the Law of Diminishing Returns, a principle articulated by David Ricardo but originally expressed, albeit implicitly, in the Essay on Population . And, of course, though Malthus himself would no doubt be dismayed, the dark image of the future he depicted played a major role in the gradual acceptance of the "improper arts" of birth control.
Malthus ' theory had great influence on both Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, who are the co-founders of the modern evolutionary theory. In his own words Darwin acknowledged, that he was already aware of the 'struggle for existence ' among different species of plants and animals. However, it was only after he read Malthus ' work, he realized that animals in their struggle to survive retained the favourable features that would help them adjust to the environment, and lost those that were of no use to them. Thus, the Theory of Natural Selection was born.
Interestingly, Malthus himself is today famous as much for being wrong as for being right. In the Western world today, there is little sign of encroaching Malthusian population pressures. Population has increased far beyond what Malthus predicted possible, and starvation, in the First World countries at least, is not a significant problem. Advancements in agricultural technology have made possible tremendous food production, which so far has been able to keep up with the expanding population without overt Malthusian checks. But the fact that Malthus ' dire predictions have not come true does not mean his basic ideas were without merit - indeed, they are the ancestors of economic and sociological theory today.
References:
Malthus, an Essay on the Principle of Population
Ehrlich, P. 1968. The Population Bomb. New York: Ballantine.
EconLib-1798: An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1st edition, 1798. Library of Economics and Liberty. Free online, full-text searchable.
Elwell, Frank W., 2003, T. Robert Malthus 's Social Theory, Retrieved August 31, 2003, http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Essay/Malthus1.htm
Wikipedia.org
Thomas Malthus, in the early 19th century published an essay on the principle of population as it affects the future improvement of the society with remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers. He criticized the views of the Utopians who believed that life could and would definitely improve for humans on earth. Populations are growing most rapidly where such growth can be afforded the least — where pollution, resource shortages, and environmental damage create additional stresses on the ability of governments to meet the basic food, clothing, and shelter needs of their populations. The relationship between human population growth and the availability of natural resources has …show more content…
occupied the minds of many thinkers since at least the 18th century. However, it was Thomas Robert Malthus who for the first time gave a systematic analysis of population and resources.
Thomas Robert Malthus published his Essay on the Principle of Population as a response to the Utopians, based on the facts of the poverty he saw around him. As he saw it, there was one simple reason why the Utopian ideas could never work: there could never be enough food to support such an idealistic society. Human misery and suffering were practically inevitable.
Malthus began his argument with two postulates: "First, That food is necessary to the existence of man. Secondly, that the passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state" .In other words, man will continue to eat, and man will continue to reproduce. Assuming these two conditions, Malthus goes on to state the core of his argument within three short paragraphs:
"Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers wills shed the immensity of the first power in comparison to the second.
"By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal.
"This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind."
A society of the type the Utopians predicted, without hunger or poverty, was impossible. Mankind will continue to reproduce until he consumes all available food supply, and then will only be prevented from expanding further by simple hunger. Therefore:
"The natural inequality of the two powers of population and of production in the earth, and that great law of our nature which must constantly keep their effects equal, form the great difficulty that to me appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society. And it appears, therefore, to be decisive against the possible existence of a society, all the members of which should live in ease, happiness, and comparative leisure; and feel no anxiety about providing the means of subsistence for themselves and families.
"Consequently, if the premises are just, the argument is conclusive against the perfectibility of the mass of mankind."
This 'conclusive argument ' by no means settled the debate; on the contrary, Malthus ' grim predictions provoked a storm of rebuttals, which damaged but never quite destroyed the credibility of his theory.
His two initial postulates, that man must eat and will continue to reproduce, Malthus felt needed little defence. Obviously, a person must eat in order to survive, and despite some speculation by the Utopian William Godwin that the sexual instinct may eventually diminish, Malthus saw little sign of this occurring at any point in the near future, and dismissed the possibility as mere conjecture.
Populations in general have the capacity to increase geometrically, but this capacity is almost never fully exploited. While this distinction was fully understood by Malthus, it was often misrepresented by his critics, who chose to interpret his Essay as claiming that population did, in actuality, increase in a geometric ratio. Malthus used as a hypothetical example of geometric growth a certain strain of wheat, which, under normal circumstances, produced six grains for every one planted. Therefore, this wheat had the capacity to sextuple in population every year - at which rate; a single acre would have expanded to cover the earth 's surface in fourteen years. Obviously, wheat did not reproduce at its full capacity.
However, the question of the maximum growth rate of a human population was somewhat more obscure. Humans, unlike wheat, cannot be said to simply double in number every nine months. In his attempt to find such a maximum growth rate, Malthus turned to the newly independent United States of America, using the country, with its vast surpluses of land and food, as his main evidence for the natural increase of human population in a geometric ratio.
Fortunately for Malthus, the recently-formed US government had readily available demographic statistics, in the form of census data. Strangely, however, in his first Essay on the Principle of Population, he summarized these statistics with the single phrase, "the population has been found to double itself in twenty-five years," While in later works, notably his 1830 Summary View of the Principle of Population, Malthus would make full use of this data, in the first Essay it was all but ignored.
Malthus ' proof of the growth of the food supply in an arithmetic ratio was even less supported. He dismissed the possibility of geometric growth of the food supply as "contrary to all our knowledge of the qualities of land," and proposed instead that, at most, the producer of the land could be increased every twenty-five years by an amount equal to its present production, justifying this with the statement, "The most enthusiastic speculator cannot suppose a greater increase than this," This illustrates a persistent weakness in Malthus ' "proof"; namely, his apparent love of theory and disregard for more convincing empirical evidence.
Accepting Malthus ' ideas of the relative growth rates of the population and the food supply, the next, and perhaps more important stage of his argument is the analysis of the consequences of this hypothesis. Within several twenty-five year generations, the population, if unchecked, would far surpass the available food supply: "In two centuries and a quarter, the population would be to the means of subsistence as 512 to 10: in three centuries as 4096 to 13, and in two thousand years the difference would be almost incalculable, though the produce in that time would have increased to an immense extent," .The effects of these vast differences are easy to predict for plants and animals: excess population would be cut down by lack of food. But with intelligent, reasoning human beings, the prediction is made more difficult.
Malthus’s principle of population is basically the law of supply and demand applied to the relationships between food production and population growth, which he makes clear time and again throughout the Essay. As the food supply increases, food becomes cheaper, and more children are brought into the world. As there are more mouths to feed, food becomes more expensive, thus causing stress on families, more children dying or steps taken to prevent conception itself. As food prices rise, more land is put under the plod, or greater efforts made in intensifying the production of the land itself.
While Malthus recognized that the relationships among the fertility of people and land are a good deal more complex than this simplified assertion, he maintained there is a recurrent reciprocal relationship between the two. Because of this reciprocal relationship between population and production, over the course of sociocultural evolution, both population and food production have grown in tandem. Periods of increase in food productivity, whether because of the application of technology or the expansion of cultivated land, have been met with expansions of population. Periods of stability in food production, or contraction in productivity, have been marked by the same phenomena in population level.
Because people can reproduce faster than they can increase the production of food, population must always be checked through positive or preventive means. This and nothing more, is Malthus’s “Principle of Population.” Over the course of sociocultural evolution, however, the long-term tendency has been for both productivity and population to intensify. This reciprocal growth, of course, has great effect on other parts of the sociocultural system.
In Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus proposes the principle that human populations grow exponentially (i.e., doubling with each cycle) while food production grows at an arithmetic rate (i.e. by the repeated addition of a uniform increment in each uniform interval of time). Thus, while food output was likely to increase in a series of twenty-five year intervals in the arithmetic progression 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and so on, population was capable of increasing in the geometric progression 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and so forth. This scenario of arithmetic food growth with simultaneous geometric human population growth predicted a future when humans would have no resources to survive on. To avoid such a catastrophe, Malthus urged controls on population growth.
Malthus believed that only bad could come from population growth. Population he said grows faster than food supply. This he said was because food supply can only grow arithmetically. Consequently, there is no way food supply can keep up with population growth.
Population grows exponentially, for example, 1-2-4-8-16-32-64. Food supply grows arithmetically, for example, 1-2-3-4-5-6. Therefore, population will inevitably exceed food supply.
Every growth model has variables and parameters, and Malthusian model is no exception. In this model, the variable is population, a number in which you need to take keen interest, and the parameter is population growth rate - which is known to you beforehand. While variables are known to change in course of time, parameters are mostly constant - but do have the tendency to change at times.
P(t) = P0e^rt
'P0 ' indicates Initial Population 'r ' indicates growth rate or Malthusian Parameter 't ' indicates time
Malthusian growth model can be applied when it comes to population of large animals when the same is not kept in check by the environment. Malthus first classified the checks on the growth of human population into two broad categories: positive and preventative (negative) checks. Firstly, he said population could exceed food supply only to be positively "checked" (reduced).
The positive checks were active in nature, and included such things as disease, war, and the most powerful check of all, famine. These were simple, effective, and brutal means of reducing population, the same found throughout nature. A population of plants might be pushed back by an encroaching weed, a situation analogous to war; deer may starve to death in an unusually snowy winter; and disease and plague can be imagined spreading through any conceivable population, though most especially in areas of high population density, where the disease is easily transmitted.
* Population exceeds food supply and is kept in check by war, famine, or disease. It then drops below the food supply. As the population recovers, so the cycle continues.
Alternatively, the population could pre-empt the food shortages and so slow their population growth keeping it within the limits of the food supply. Malthus called these negative checks. The chief preventive check envisaged by Malthus was that of "moral restraint", which was seen as a deliberate decision by men to refrain "from pursuing the dictate of nature in an early attachment to one woman", i.e. to marry later in life than had been usual and only at a stage when fully capable of supporting a family. These negative checks would include later marriages and abstinence from sex (Remember Malthus was writing before wide spread contraception!). People would make these decisions sub-consciously as food prices increased and standard of living fell. This, it was anticipated, would give rise to smaller families and probably to fewer families, but Malthus was strongly opposed to birth control within marriage and did not suggest that parents should try to restrict the number of children born to them after their marriage. Malthus was clearly aware that problems might arise from the postponement of marriage to a later date, such as an increase in the number of illegitimate births, but considered that these problems were likely to be less serious than those caused by a continuation of rapid population increase.
According to Malthus, similar restraints, primarily economic in nature, exist at all levels of society, though they increase in strength as one goes down the societal ladder.
A nobleman had little to prevent him from having a family; his wealth would more than likely be sufficient to support many offspring, though they would be a slight drain on his finances. However, in the case of a man well educated but only barely wealthy enough to maintain his upper-class status, the financial burden of children would perhaps be enough to drive him down into the society of common trades people, a sacrifice he may be unwilling to make. These same trades people, Malthus states, are encouraged to postpone marriage until later in life, when they have established themselves with a farm or business of their own - a late marriage, of course, would provide far less time to bear children. Stepping down further, into the ranks of the labourers, Malthus sees not only diminished social standing, but also the possibility of incurring the dreaded positive checks, as reasons to hold off marriage. At the lower ranks of society are the preventative checks strongest, as only the common man must face the real possibility of being unable to feed his children. It was here, at the low end of society, that Malthus saw the force of his checks to population acting in full force, being responsible, in the long run, for the undisputed misery and discontent of the lower
classes.
* Here, as population starts to approach the limits of the food supply, so growth slows. Malthus says this slowing is caused by delayed marriage.
Boserup, on the other hand, said that food supply would increase to accommodate population growth. As a population found that they were approaching food shortages they would identify ways of increasing supply whether through new technology, better seeds, and new farming methods. In the graph you can see that food supply will increase with population:
* Boserup argues that as the population approaches the limits of the food supply, that food supply increases as new technology improves yields.
Evidence for Malthus:
Evidence for Boserup:
Famines are frequently happening in less developed world countries. These are also often in countries that have a fast growing population.
There is enough food to feed the world - this is an indisputable fact. The problem lies with distribution - it is not always where it is needed.
Whilst a very old theory Malthus can be adapted for today if we say that increasing population cannot be sustained by the environment. The 'Club of Rome ' applies Malthusian ideas to the modern world and says that if population continues to grow our attempts to cater for it will lead to great environmental disasters. This would include global warming, oil spillage, ozone depletion, and desertification.
Famine is more likely to be the result of a natural disaster, war or the country growing too many cash crops. Cash crops are grown to sell overseas - such as cotton or tea. In times of famine the countries are often producing large cash crop harvests. They need the money to try and pay off foreign debts.
Malthusian supporters argue that everything at the moment may appear ok but this doesn 't mean we won 't face future disasters.
New farming machinery and re-organisation has greatly increased the efficiency of farms and consequently the yields.
Malthus was not content with one classification system for his checks - or, perhaps, in the overwhelming disorganization of the first Essay, dashed off at the spur of the moment as it were, he simply lost track of the fact that he had, in fact, developed two parallel systems. The second, who took a more moralistic view, divided checks into misery and vice. This system, like the first, was exclusive, all checks falling into one category or the other: "In short," stated Malthus, "it is difficult to conceive any check to population which does not come under the description of some species of misery or vice," .Roughly speaking, these were checks visited upon man by the outside world, and checks which came from man himself. Misery included such things as hunger, poverty, and disease. Malthus realized, apparently after the publication of the first Essay, that his classification of the checks to growth into vice and misery left little room for the preventative checks he discussed earlier. The decision to postpone having a family neither could be categorized neither as misery nor as vice. By the time of a Summary View, Malthus had changed his original stance, adding to vice and misery the category of moral restraint. Moral restraint, according to Malthus, was the only possible way to avoid the brutal forces of misery and vice. Marx opposed and criticized the Malthusian theory of population. According to Marx, population increase must be interpreted in the context of the capitalistic economic system. A capitalist gives to labour as wage a small share of labour’s productivity, and the capitalist himself takes the lion 's share. The capitalist introduces more and more machinery and thus increases the surplus value of labour’s productivity, which is pocketed by the capitalist. The surplus is the difference between labour’s productivity and the wage level. A worker is paid less than the value of his productivity. When machinery is introduced, unemployment increases and, consequently, a reserve army of labour are created. Under these situations, the wage level goes down further, the poor parents cannot properly rear their children and a large part of the population becomes virtually surplus. Poverty, hunger and other social ills are the result of socially unjust practices associated with capitalism. Population growth, according to Marx, is therefore not related to the alleged ignorance or moral inferiority of the poor, but is a consequence of the capitalist economic system. Marx points out that landlordism, unfavourable and high man-land ratio, uncertainty regarding land tenure system and the like are responsible for low food production in a country. Only in places where the production of food is not adequate does population growth become a problem.
As global populations rose spectacularly in the 20th century, theoretical debates over the extent and causes of the population problem expanded. Thomas Malthus and Karl Marx had set the initial stage for the world population debate, but other population theorists - including Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, Garrett Hardin, and Barry Commoner - would carry the ongoing discussion in the second half of the 20th century.
In 1968, as world population hovered above 3 billion, Paul Ehrlich authored the book The Population Bomb, a widely read publication that sold several million copies in the United States alone. Ehrlich, a biologist, maintained that the rate of population growth was outstripping agricultural growth and the capacity for renewal of Earth 's resources. Given current rates of natural increase, Ehrlich predicted "certain" demographic disaster in response to eventual food shortages and disease. In the opening to his book, he wrote: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over" and later stated that, "In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs" (Ehrlich 1968). Ehrlich argued that industrialized regions such North America and Europe would be required to undertake "mild" food rationing as starvation spread across the developing worlds of Asia, Latin America, and Africa. In a worst case scenario, he predicted that the lack of food security in the developing world would set into motion several geopolitical crises that could result in thermonuclear war. At its core, Ehrlich 's population theory contained three major elements: a rapid rate of change, a limit of some sort, and delays in perceiving the limit.
While some criticized Ehrlich 's work as simply a repetition of Malthus 's 19th century argument, Ehrlich 's most vocal opponent, economist Julian Simon, was sceptical of the more central tenets of the population bomb, particularly the definition of limits. In the 1970s, Julian Simon published two central pieces that served to galvanize the population debate: The Economics of Population Growth (1977) followed by The Ultimate Resource (1981). Simon argued that the relationship between population growth and economic growth was not as simple as Ehrlich believed, and that the extent to which population pressure impacted resources was overstated. The crux of Simon 's argument centred on his belief that Ehrlich 's limit on the availability of resources was misdirected. Simon instead argued that it was not possible to have too many people, for the only limit in determining the scarcity of resources was human imagination. People, the economist suggested, were the ultimate resource. According to Simon, ingenious, resourceful humans had the capacity to invent crops with higher yields, or to construct inexpensive, safe housing for growing populations. Simon 's other contention was that current views on population and resource issues failed to take the long view, and that frequently too short a time frame was considered when examining demographic problems.
Malthus was not blind to the grim nature of the future he forecast for mankind. Indeed, he stated in the preface to the Essay that, if proven wrong, he would "rejoice in a conviction of his error," The ideas Malthus lay out, if true, spelled the end for hopes of human perfection on earth - misery was all but inevitable. If this was the case, why, wondered the Anglican minister, had God created such a world?
The final two chapters of the Essay attempted to answer this question, what theologists and philosophers termed the Question of Evil. Given a God who was both all-powerful and completely good, how, then, could the evil which Malthus predicted was inevitable exist? Could not God have simply created a world where Malthusian factors never came into play?
The answer Malthus settled upon was that, in the divine plan, human suffering was not meaningless evil, but only a path to a greater good yet to come. A world where there was no pain would provide no stimulus to mental and spiritual growth, and would lead to a race of mankind grown lazy and stupid with lack of exertion. "The heart that has never known sorrow," said Malthus, "itself will seldom be feelingly alive to the pains and pleasures, the wants and wishes, of its fellow beings," Some suffering was necessary for true goodness to appear, argued Malthus, for in a world without evil, of what significance is good? The petty misery caused by Malthus ' checks was part of a divine plan, calculated so that, in the end, it would produce the "greatest possible quantity of good," It is ironic that an essay begun with the express purpose of disproving a hypothesis of human perfectibility on earth, and maintaining throughout that suffering is inevitable, should end with such an optimistic statement.
Despite disorganization, mathematical weaknesses, and an almost complete lack of supporting evidence, Malthus ' first Essay was still an extremely important work, with influences extending to the present day. The ideas expressed by Malthus were read by Darwin, and played a major role in Darwin 's development of the theory of evolution. Malthus ' economic ideas are visible today as the Law of Diminishing Returns, a principle articulated by David Ricardo but originally expressed, albeit implicitly, in the Essay on Population . And, of course, though Malthus himself would no doubt be dismayed, the dark image of the future he depicted played a major role in the gradual acceptance of the "improper arts" of birth control.
Malthus ' theory had great influence on both Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, who are the co-founders of the modern evolutionary theory. In his own words Darwin acknowledged, that he was already aware of the 'struggle for existence ' among different species of plants and animals. However, it was only after he read Malthus ' work, he realized that animals in their struggle to survive retained the favourable features that would help them adjust to the environment, and lost those that were of no use to them. Thus, the Theory of Natural Selection was born.
Interestingly, Malthus himself is today famous as much for being wrong as for being right. In the Western world today, there is little sign of encroaching Malthusian population pressures. Population has increased far beyond what Malthus predicted possible, and starvation, in the First World countries at least, is not a significant problem. Advancements in agricultural technology have made possible tremendous food production, which so far has been able to keep up with the expanding population without overt Malthusian checks. But the fact that Malthus ' dire predictions have not come true does not mean his basic ideas were without merit - indeed, they are the ancestors of economic and sociological theory today.
References:
Malthus, an Essay on the Principle of Population
Ehrlich, P. 1968. The Population Bomb. New York: Ballantine.
EconLib-1798: An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1st edition, 1798. Library of Economics and Liberty. Free online, full-text searchable.
Elwell, Frank W., 2003, T. Robert Malthus 's Social Theory, Retrieved August 31, 2003, http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Essay/Malthus1.htm
Wikipedia.org