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Malthus was interested in everything about populations. He accumulated figures on births, deaths, age of marriage and childbearing, and economic factors contributing to longevity. His main contribution was to highlight the relationship between food supply and population. Humans do not overpopulate to the point of starvation, he contended, only because people change their behavior in the face of economic incentives.
Noting that while food production tends to increase arithmetically, population tends to increase naturally at a (faster) geometric rate, Malthus argued that it is no surprise that people thus choose to reduce (or “check”) population growth. People can increase food production, Malthus thought, only by slow, difficult methods such as reclaiming unused land or intensive farming; but they can check population growth more effectively by marrying late, using contraceptives, emigrating, or, in more extreme circumstances, resorting to reduced health care, tolerating vicious social diseases or impoverished living conditions, warfare, or even infanticide. Malthus was fascinated not with the inevitability of human demise, but with why humans do not die off in the face of such overwhelming odds. As an economist, he studied responses to incentives.
Malthus is arguably the most misunderstood and misrepresented economist of all time. The adjective “Malthusian” is used today to describe a pessimistic prediction of the lock-step demise of a humanity doomed to starvation via overpopulation. When his hypothesis was first stated in his best-selling An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), the uproar it caused among noneconomists overshadowed the instant respect it inspired among his fellow economists. So irrefutable and simple was his illustrative side-by-side comparison of an arithmetic and a geometric series—food increases more slowly than population—that it was often taken out of context and highlighted as his main observation. The observation is, indeed, so stark that it is still easy to lose sight of Malthus’s actual conclusion: that because humans have not all starved, economic choices must be at work, and it is the job of an economist to study those choices.
Malthus addressed many other issues. His Principles of Political Economy (1820) was the first text to describe a demand schedule as separate from the quantity demanded at a given price. His exposition of demand curves clarified the debate on Say’s law and gluts (to which he objected in the long run on the grounds that markets self-adjust). His work centered on contrasting the long run, as exemplified by population growth, with the short run, reflected by cyclical events such as those affecting agriculture. Writing before the industrial revolution, Malthus did not fully appreciate the impact of technology (i.e., pesticides, refrigeration, mechanized farm equipment, and increased crop yields) on food production.
Malthus died in 1834, before seeing economics characterized as the “dismal science.” That phrase, coined by Thomas Carlyle in 1849 to demean John Stuart Mill, is often erroneously thought to refer to Malthus’s contributions to the economics of population growth.
Lauren F. Landsburg is a private computer consultant. She is the editor of the Library of Economics and Liberty. Previously, she taught economics at the University of Rochester and was a senior economist with President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. Thomas Robert Malthus FRS Born13/14 February 1766Westcott, Surrey, England Died23 December 1834(1834-12-23) (aged 68)Bath, Somerset, England SpouseHarriet Eckersall (m. 1804)Children3Field
traditionClassical economicsAlma materJesus College, CambridgeInfluences
Thomas Robert Malthus FRS (/ˈmælθəs/; 13/14 February 1766 – 23 December 1834)[1] was an English cleric, scholar and influential economist in the fields of political economy and demography.[2] In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the population, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the "Malthusian trap" or the "Malthusian spectre". Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want and greater susceptibility to war famine and disease, a pessimistic view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe. Malthus wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible.[3] Malthus saw population growth as inevitable whenever conditions improved, thereby precluding real progress towards a utopian society: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man."[4] As an Anglican cleric, he saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behavior.[5] Malthus wrote that "the increase of population is necessarily limited by subsistence," "population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase," and "the superior power of population repress by moral restraint, vice, and misery."[6] Malthus criticized the Poor Laws for leading to inflation rather than improving the well-being of the poor.[7] He supported taxes on grain imports (the Corn Laws).[8] His views became influential and controversial across economic, political, social and scientific thought. Pioneers of evolutionary biology read him, notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.[9][10] Malthus's failure to predict the Industrial Revolution was a frequent criticism of his theories.[11] Malthus laid the "...theoretical foundation of the conventional wisdom that has dominated the debate, both scientifically and ideologically,[12] on global hunger and famines for almost two centuries."[13] He remains a much-debated writer. Early life and educationThomas Robert Malthus was the sixth of seven children[14] of Daniel Malthus and Henrietta Catherine, daughter of Daniel Graham, apothecary to kings George II and George III, and granddaughter of Thomas Graham, apothecary to kings George I and George II. Henrietta was depicted alongside her siblings in William Hogarth's painting, The Graham Children (1742).[15] Malthus was born at The Rookery, a "small elegant mansion" at Westcott, near Dorking in Surrey, which his father had bought- at that time called Chert-gate farm- and converted into "a gentleman's seat"; the family sold it in 1768 and moved to "a less extensive establishment at Albury, not far from Guildford". Malthus had a cleft lip and palate which affected his speech; such birth defects had occurred in previous generations of his family. His friend, the social theorist Harriet Martineau, who was hard of hearing, nevertheless stated that due to his sonorous voice he was the only person she could hear well without her ear trumpet.[16][17][14][18] William Petersen and John Maynard Keynes describe Daniel Malthus as "a gentleman of good family and independent means [...] [and] a friend of David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau". Daniel Malthus was son of Sydenham Malthus, who was a clerk of Chancery and director of the South Sea Company; he was also "proprietor of several landed properties in the Home Counties and Cambridgeshire". Sydenham Malthus's father, Daniel, had been apothecary to King William and later to Queen Anne; Daniel's father, Rev. Robert Malthus, was appointed vicar of Northolt, Middlesex (now West London) under the regicide Cromwell, but "evicted at the Restoration"; he was described as "an ancient divine, a man of strong reason, and mighty in the Scriptures, of great eloquence and fervour, though defective in elocution", due to "a very great impediment in his utterance" which has been concluded to be likely to have been a cleft palate.[19][20][21] The young Malthus received his education at the Warrington Academy from 1782, where he was taught by Gilbert Wakefield. Warrington was a dissenting academy, which closed in 1783. Malthus continued for a period to be tutored by Wakefield at the latter's home in Bramcote, Nottinghamshire.[22][23] Malthus entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1784. While there, he took prizes in English declamation, Latin and Greek, and graduated with honours, Ninth Wrangler in mathematics. His tutor was William Frend.[23][24] He took the MA degree in 1791, and was elected a Fellow of Jesus College two years later.[25] In 1789, he took orders in the Church of England, and became a curate at Oakwood Chapel (also Okewood) in the parish of Wotton, Surrey.[26] Population growth
Malthus came to prominence for his 1798 publication, An Essay on the Principle of Population. He wrote the original text in reaction to the optimism of his father and his father's associates (notably Jean-Jacques Rousseau) regarding the future improvement of society. He also constructed his case as a specific response to writings of William Godwin (1756–1836) and of the Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794). His assertions evoked questions and criticism, and between 1798 and 1826 he published six more versions of An Essay on the Principle of Population, updating each edition to incorporate new material, to address criticism, and to convey changes in his own perspectives on the subject. The Malthusian controversy to which the Essay gave rise in the decades following its publication tended to focus attention on the birth rate and marriage rates. The neo-Malthusian controversy, comprising related debates of many years later, has seen a similar central role assigned to the numbers of children born.[27] The goal of Malthusian theory is to explain how population and food production expand, with the latter experiencing arithmetic growth and the former experiencing exponential growth.[1] The key focus here, however, is the relevance of Malthusian theory in the present world. This hypothesis is inapplicable in a number of ways. First, the hypothesis is rendered irrelevant.[2] due to a disregard for technological advancement. This is because food production has increased as a result of technological advancements such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs)[3] Second, the mathematical model employed to formulate the hypothesis is incorrect since it was constrained to England's specific situation.[4]. Other findings, such as food production exceeding population increase, may be borne out if the modeling could employ wide locations like Australia[5]. The Malthusian hypothesis is also limited by social change about family size[6], as individuals will always prefer a manageable family owing to economic restrictions. Food production can also outpace population expansion, thanks to the industrial revolution[7]. Another limitation of this theory is the belief that overall income is a key factor of population health[8], implying that wealthy countries will have various solutions for their rapidly rising populations[9]. The Malthusian theory is also irrelevant because an expanding population can be seen as an increase in available human capacity for boosting food production[10]. The static aspect of the Malthusian hypothesis, which is based on the rule of decreasing returns[11]. limits its applicability. Finally, Malthusian Theory's failure to determine whether birth rates match death rates hampered its application[12]because it was possible that the population was not rising as fast as food production due to the presence of deaths. Travel and further careerIn 1799, Malthus made a European tour with William Otter, a close college friend, travelling part of the way with Edward Daniel Clarke and John Marten Cripps, visiting Germany, Scandinavia and Russia. Malthus used the trip to gather population data. Otter later wrote a Memoir of Malthus for the second (1836) edition of his Principles of Political Economy.[28][29] During the Peace of Amiens of 1802 he travelled to France and Switzerland, in a party that included his relation and future wife Harriet.[30] In 1803, he became rector of Walesby, Lincolnshire.[25] In 1805, Malthus became Professor of History and Political Economy at the East India Company College in Hertfordshire.[31] His students affectionately referred to him as "Pop", "Population", or "web-toe" Malthus. Near the end of 1817, the proposed appointment of Graves Champney Haughton to the college was made a pretext by Randle Jackson and Joseph Hume to launch an attempt to close it down. Malthus wrote a pamphlet defending the college, which was reprieved by the East India Company within the same year, 1817.[32] In 1818, Malthus became a Fellow of the Royal Society. Malthus–Ricardo debate on political economyDuring the 1820s, there took place a setpiece intellectual discussion among the exponents of political economy, often called the Malthus–Ricardo debate after its leading figures, Malthus and theorist of free trade David Ricardo, both of whom had written books with the title Principles of Political Economy. Under examination were the nature and methods of political economy itself, while it was simultaneously under attack from others.[33] The roots of the debate were in the previous decade. In The Nature of Rent (1815), Malthus had dealt with economic rent, a major concept in classical economics. Ricardo defined a theory of rent in his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817): he regarded rent as value in excess of real production—something caused by ownership rather than by free trade. Rent therefore represented a kind of negative money that landlords could pull out of the production of the land, by means of its scarcity.[34] Contrary to this concept, Malthus proposed rent to be a kind of economic surplus.[35] The debate developed over the economic concept of a general glut, and the possibility of failure of Say's Law. Malthus laid importance on economic development and the persistence of disequilibrium.[36] The context was the post-war depression; Malthus had a supporter in William Blake, in denying that capital accumulation (saving) was always good in such circumstances, and John Stuart Mill attacked Blake on the fringes of the debate.[37] Ricardo corresponded with Malthus from 1817 about his Principles. He was drawn into considering political economy in a less restricted sense, which might be adapted to legislation and its multiple objectives, by the thought of Malthus. In Principles of Political Economy (1820) and elsewhere, Malthus addressed the tension, amounting to conflict he saw between a narrow view of political economy and the broader moral and political plane.[38] Leslie Stephen wrote:
It is now considered that the different purposes seen by Malthus and Ricardo for political economy affected their technical discussion, and contributed to the lack of compatible definitions.[36] For example, Jean-Baptiste Say used a definition of production based on goods and services and so queried the restriction of Malthus to "goods" alone.[40] In terms of public policy, Malthus was a supporter of the protectionist Corn Laws from the end of the Napoleonic Wars. He emerged as the only economist of note to support duties on imported grain.[41] By encouraging domestic production, Malthus argued, the Corn Laws would guarantee British self-sufficiency in food.[42] Later lifeMalthus was a founding member in 1821 of the Political Economy Club, where John Cazenove tended to be his ally against Ricardo and Mill.[43] He was elected in the beginning of 1824 as one of the ten royal associates of the Royal Society of Literature. He was also one of the first fellows of the Statistical Society, founded in March 1834. In 1827 he gave evidence to a committee of the House of Commons on emigration.[44] In 1827, he published Definitions in Political Economy[45] The first chapter put forth "Rules for the Definition and Application of Terms in Political Economy". In chapter 10, the penultimate chapter, he presented 60 numbered paragraphs putting forth terms and their definitions that he proposed should be used in discussing political economy following those rules. This collection of terms and definitions is remarkable for two reasons: first, Malthus was the first economist to explicitly organize, define, and publish his terms as a coherent glossary of defined terms; and second, his definitions were for the most part well-formed definitional statements. Between these chapters, he criticized several contemporary economists—Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, James Mill, John Ramsay McCulloch, and Samuel Bailey—for sloppiness in choosing, attaching meaning to, and using their technical terms.[46] McCulloch was the editor of The Scotsman of Edinburgh and replied cuttingly in a review printed on the front page of his newspaper in March 1827.[47] He implied that Malthus wanted to dictate terms and theories to other economists. McCulloch clearly felt his ox gored, and his review of Definitions is largely a bitter defence of his own Principles of Political Economy,[48] and his counter-attack "does little credit to his reputation", being largely "personal derogation" of Malthus.[49] The purpose of Malthus's Definitions was terminological clarity, and Malthus discussed appropriate terms, their definitions, and their use by himself and his contemporaries. This motivation of Malthus's work was disregarded by McCulloch, who responded that there was nothing to be gained "by carping at definitions, and quibbling about the meaning to be attached to" words. Given that statement, it is not surprising that McCulloch's review failed to address the rules of chapter 1 and did not discuss the definitions of chapter 10; he also barely mentioned Malthus's critiques of other writers.[46] In spite of this and in the wake of McCulloch's scathing review, the reputation of Malthus as economist dropped away for the rest of his life.[50] On the other hand, Malthus did have supporters, including Thomas Chalmers, some of the Oriel Noetics, Richard Jones and William Whewell from Cambridge.[51] Malthus died suddenly of heart disease on 23 December 1834 at his father-in-law's house. He was buried in Bath Abbey.[44] His portrait,[52] and descriptions by contemporaries, present him as tall and good-looking, but with a cleft lip and palate.[53] FamilyOn 13 March 1804, Malthus married Harriet, daughter of John Eckersall of Claverton House, near Bath. They had a son and two daughters. His first born Henry became vicar of Effingham, Surrey in 1835 and of Donnington, Sussex in 1837; he married Sofia Otter (1807–1889), daughter of Bishop William Otter and died in August 1882, aged 76. His middle child Emily died in 1885, outliving her parents and siblings. The youngest Lucille died unmarried and childless in 1825, months before her 18th birthday.[44] An Essay on the Principle of PopulationMalthus argued in his Essay (1798) that population growth generally expanded in times and in regions of plenty until the size of the population relative to the primary resources caused distress:
Malthus argued that two types of checks hold population within resource limits: positive checks, which raise the death rate; and preventive ones, which lower the birth rate. The positive checks include hunger, disease and war; the preventive checks: birth control, postponement of marriage and celibacy.[54] The rapid increase in the global population of the past century exemplifies Malthus's predicted population patterns; it also appears to describe socio-demographic dynamics of complex pre-industrial societies. These findings are the basis for neo-Malthusian modern mathematical models of long-term historical dynamics.[55] Malthus wrote that in a period of resource abundance, a population could double in 25 years. However, the margin of abundance could not be sustained as population grew, leading to checks on population growth:
In later editions of his essay, Malthus clarified his view that if society relied on human misery to limit population growth, then sources of misery (e.g., hunger, disease, and war) would inevitably afflict society, as would volatile economic cycles. On the other hand, "preventive checks" to population that limited birthrates, such as later marriages, could ensure a higher standard of living for all, while also increasing economic stability.[57] Regarding possibilities for freeing man from these limits, Malthus argued against a variety of imaginable solutions, such as the notion that agricultural improvements could expand without limit.[58] Of the relationship between population and economics, Malthus wrote that when the population of laborers grows faster than the production of food, real wages fall because the growing population causes the cost of living (i.e., the cost of food) to go up. Difficulties of raising a family eventually reduce the rate of population growth, until the falling population again leads to higher real wages. In the second and subsequent editions Malthus put more emphasis on moral restraint as the best means of easing the poverty of the lower classes."[59] Editions and versions
Other works1800: The present high price of provisionsIn this work, his first published pamphlet, Malthus argues against the notion prevailing in his locale that the greed of intermediaries caused the high price of provisions. Instead, Malthus says that the high price stems from the Poor Laws, which "increase the parish allowances in proportion to the price of corn." Thus, given a limited supply, the Poor Laws force up the price of daily necessities. However, he concludes by saying that in time of scarcity such Poor Laws, by raising the price of corn more evenly, actually produce a beneficial effect.[61] 1814: Observations on the effects of the Corn LawsAlthough government in Britain had regulated the prices of grain, the Corn Laws originated in 1815. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars that year, Parliament passed legislation banning the importation of foreign corn into Britain until domestic corn cost 80 shillings per quarter.[clarification needed] The high price caused the cost of food to increase and caused distress among the working classes in the towns. It led to serious rioting in London and to the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in 1819.[62][63] In this pamphlet, printed during the parliamentary discussion, Malthus tentatively supported the free-traders. He argued that given the increasing cost of growing British corn, advantages accrued from supplementing it from cheaper foreign sources. 1820: Principles of political economyIn 1820 Malthus published Principles of Political Economy. (A second edition was posthumously published in 1836.) Malthus intended this work to rival Ricardo's Principles (1817).[64] It, and his 1827 Definitions in political economy, defended Sismondi's views on "general glut" rather than Say's Law, which in effect states "there can be no general glut".[citation needed] Other publications
Reception and influenceMalthus developed the theory of demand-supply mismatches that he called gluts. Discounted at the time, this theory foreshadowed later work by an admirer, John Maynard Keynes.[65] The vast bulk of continuing commentary on Malthus, however, extends and expands on the "Malthusian controversy" of the early 19th century. In Ireland where (writing to Ricardo in 1817) Malthus proposed that "to give full effect to the natural resources of the country a great part of the population should be swept from the soil",[66] a comparatively early contribution was Observations on the population and resources of Ireland (1821) by the polymath and physician Whitely Stokes.[67] Finding fault in Malthus's calculations and juxtapositions--"the possible increase of man in America" measured against "the probable increase in [food] production in Great Britain"—and insisting upon the advantages mankind derives from "improved industry, improved conveyance, improvements in morals, government and religion", Stokes argued that Ireland's difficulty lay not in her "numbers", but in indifferent government.[68] In popular culture
EpitaphThe epitaph of Malthus just inside the entrance to Bath AbbeyThe epitaph of Malthus in Bath Abbey reads [with commas inserted for clarity]:
See also
Notes
[1] Walter, R. (2020). Malthus's principle of population in Britain: restatement and antiquation. In Malthus Across Nations. Edward Elgar Publishing. [2] Brooks, J. (2021). Settler Colonialism, Primitive Accumulation, and Biopolitics in Xinjiang, China. Primitive Accumulation, and Biopolitics in Xinjiang, China (September 4, 2021). [3] Mokyr, J. (2018). The past and the future of innovation: Some lessons from economic history. Explorations in Economic History, 69, 13-26. [4] Smith, K. (2013). The Malthusian Controversy. Routledge. [5] Robertson, T. (2012). The Malthusian moment. Rutgers University Press. [6] Malthus, T. R., Winch, D., & James, P. (1992). Malthus: 'An Essay on the Principle of Population'. Cambridge University Press. [7] Kallis, G. (2019). Limits: Why Malthus was wrong and why environmentalists should care. Stanford University Press. [8] Cremaschi, S. (2014). Utilitarianism and Malthus's Virtue Ethics: Respectable, virtuous and happy. Routledge. [9] Chiarini, B., Malanima, P., & Piga, G. (Eds.). (2012). From Malthus' stagnation to sustained growth: social, demographic and economic factors. Palgrave Macmillan. [10] The Economist. (2008). Malthus, the false prophet. Retrieved 10 April 2022, from https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2008/05/15/malthus-the-false-prophet [11] Patel, R. (2015). 'The End of Plenty,' by Joel K. Bourne Jr. (Published 2015). Retrieved 10 April 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/books/review/the-end-of-plenty-by-joel-k-bourne-jr.html [12] Shermer, M. (2016). Why Malthus Is Still Wrong. Why Malthus makes for bad science policy. Retrieved 10 April 2022, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-malthus-is-still-wrong/ References
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