Robert Malthus' Theory of Population

Robert Malthus’ Theory of Population

England in the 1790’s was a time of industrial revolution and rapid growth and development all across the country. During this time of industrial boom a young man by the name of Thomas Robert Malthus, who liked to go by his middle name, was looking around and thinking about what would happen if this boom never stopped and the population continued to grow. What he noticed would happen frightened him as he realized mankind wasn’t ready or capable of sustaining the growth at which it was growing and that it would lead to catastrophe. Malthus took this realization and came up with solutions to prevent it and published his thoughts to the world and hoped to make a change. What disasters did he see coming, what was his plan to stop them from happening, and who was he?

Robert Malthus was an English economist, cleric, and scholar who lived from 1766 to 1834. Malthus was born into an educated and religious family and spent his early life following in his parent's footsteps also becoming educated and religious. Malthus’ name became known when he released his 1798 essay on population growth called, Essay on the Principle of Population. When Malthus published this essay he became the first economist to propose a systematic theory of population (AAG Center for Global Geography Education 1). His ideas in this essay had bold claims about population and he offers solutions to the issues that Malthus believed would arise if no changes were made with the way of life at the time. Malthus made six different editions of this essay but only minor changes were made and the main ideas of the work were left relatively unchanged. His essay mentioned the many different effects that population could have on many different aspects of life such as poverty, religion, work ethic, war, disease, famine, moral beliefs, and much more.

Malthus’ entire argument begins with the different rates of growth between the population and the food supply being produced. At the time of his research and writing, the population was growing at an exponential rate with no sign of slowing. At the same time, the growth of food production was increasing arithmetically, an addition of a fixed amount at a fixed period of time, and was growing much slower compared to the growth of population. With no sign of a sharp increase in food production or a sharp decline in population rate, Malthus saw an issue arising and saw that is was an issue that needed to be fixed quickly. Malthus had estimated that in the next 200 years from the release of the first edition of his theory that the population would grow to 256 billion people if growth rates were to continue as they were. He also estimated that if the food supply were to remain growing at the same rate over those same 200 years as it was at the time then it would only be able to support a population of nine billion people (AAG Center for Global Geography Education 1). This relation between population growth and food supply is shown in figure 1.

(Figure 1, “S-Cool, the Revision Website.” Population Models | S-Cool, the Revision Website)

Malthus realized that these numbers were clearly not sustainable and would lead to catastrophic events. This is where Malthus began his thoughts on this subject and began to look at what this would cause and what could be done to stop it from ever happening.

Based on the number Malthus came up with from his research he believed that the growth of population would lead to humans having no resources to survive on within the next 200 years. He also believed many other devastating things would happen before this final catastrophic event would occur. Some of the issues he predicted would be the dramatic increase in poverty, wars, widespread famine and basically a world of despair. Malthus realized that as the population and food supply continued to grow closer and closer the demand for food would dramatically increase and supply wouldn’t so prices would also dramatically increase. This increase would lead to large-scale poverty as the majority of households incomes would go directly to a basic human need that can’t be substituted. This same relationship between high demand and low supply could result in wars in an attempt to forcibly increase the amount of food supply. These wars created could be both civil and international. If the poor attempt to fight for the food controlled by the government and wealthy or if the government chooses to fight foreign governments in an attempt to gain more for its citizens, either way, war will break out. The most obvious of the disasters that will occur would be widespread famine as the food supply just simply becomes insufficient to support the demand of it. Malthus supported this theory with evidence from looking at less developed countries that also had fast-growing populations and noticed these countries were frequently experiencing famines. Malthus looked at all of these disasters that he believed were inevitable if nothing was done about the population growth was left unchecked and began to look at solutions to prevent this disastrous end.

Malthus knew there were only two ways to stop this trend from continuing, either increase the production of the food supply to match the increase in population or decrease the population growth to match the food supply. When looking at what could be done to the food supply to increase its production this is what he said, “No man can say that he has seen the largest ear of wheat, or the largest oak that could ever grow; but he might easily, and with perfect certainty, name a point of magnitude, at which they would not arrive. In all these cases therefore, a careful distinction should be made, between an unlimited progress, and a progress where the limit is merely undefined" (Malthus 1st ed, 52). What Malthus meant when he said this in his essay was that no one can reasonably say that they have seen the biggest ever or best ever of anything because there is almost always going to be something bigger and better eventually. Malthus also says that you can however reasonably say at which magnitude something will never exist. The point Malthus is trying to make by saying this is that the magnitude of the production of the food supply is not infinite and although it can get better and will get better it will never be good enough to only increase the food supply and not lower the growth of population. If left unchecked the population could grow infinitely and the food supply just simply can’t. Looking at this Malthus concluded simply concluded that the food supply would never be able to meet the growth of population at the rate it is going at.

After concluding that increasing