Thomas Malthus

By Charles Sannat, Resident Economist at Au Coffre

The first in a summer series of articles on the great economists

Thomas Robert Malthus was born near Guildford (Surrey) on the 13th of February 1766 and died in Bath (Somerset) on the 29th of December 1834 (at the age of 68);  he was a British economist of the Classical School as well an Anglican priest.

He is known in particular for his work on the relationship between the dynamics of population growth and production, analyzed from a “pessimistic” perspective, in full opposition to the Smithian concept of harmonious and stable equilibrium.

His name gave rise to a new adjective in common parlance, “Malthusian”, often viewed with negative connotations (describing a somewhat conservative frame of mind, anti-investment or fearful of scarcity) and a doctrine, Malthusianism, which includes an active birth control policy to control population growth.

In 1798, he published anonymously An Essay on the Principle of Population, which was hugely successful as well as controversial. Malthus then committed himself to deepening his research and travelled the continent, visiting Denmark, Sweden and Russia. In 1803, he published a new edition of his Essay, much expanded, and signed it by name. The repercussions were significant. In 1809, the fourth edition of the Essay was translated into French, in Geneva.

He met David Ricardo for the first time in 1811, the two men subsequently maintained an extensive correspondence which enabled him to develop new methods of analysis of demand.

He wrote other works, in particular Principles of Political Economy, published in 1820.

He died in 1834 and was buried at Bath Abbey, in Somerset.

Malthus and the relationship between population and production

The works of Adam Smith and David Hume soon attracted him toward political economy. He attempted to apply the theories of William Godwin, an 18th century rationalist, influenced by the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Condorcet, who believed in a perfectible society. The priest Malthus was charged with assistance to the poor in his community; the poor harvests from 1794 to 1800 resulted in misery and distress, and struck a chord.

In 1796 he wrote an essay on the crisis which England was undergoing, an essay which adopted a position in favour of social justice and proposing to expand the system of public assistance to the poor, but he did not publish it.

However, the student of Godwin rebelled against his teacher upon reading Social Justice (1793). In this utopian work, Godwin described a society where an increasing population will encounter prosperity and justice. The gap between Godwin’s ideas and the brutal reality that he observed lead Malthus to radically alter his perception.

His Essay on the Principle of Population, published in 1798, was a lampoon reacting against these ideas.

In opposition to the “moral” reformers who blamed the government for the ills of society, Malthus wanted to demonstrate that they actually arise from natural and inescapable laws. He adopted a theory put forward by Joseph Townsend in A Dissertation on the Poor Laws in 1786 or by the Italian Giammaria Ortes.

An Essay on the Principle of Population

Malthus mathematically predicts that without barriers, population grows in an exponential or symmetrical manner (for example: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32…) while resources grow only in an arithmetical manner (1, 2, 3, 4,5, 6…). He thus concludes that demographic catastrophes are inevitable by nature, unless population growth is prevented.

He also advocated the ceasing of all help to the needy, in opposition to the Speenhamland laws (a precursor of the modern welfare state, which produced many of the problems that we now experience) and the proposals of William Godwin who sought to expand assistance to the poor.

Policies of population control influenced by Malthus are known as “Malthusian”.  His fears revolved around the theory that population growth is faster than the increase in resources, resulting in impoverishment of part of the population. As the old regulators of population (wars and epidemics) were no longer playing their parts, he imagined new barriers, such as restricting the size of families and the deferring the legal age of marriage. These proposals are only currently applied in  the People’s Republic of China, which indeed views itself as being forced [not neutral] to severely restrict its population.

Malthus’s pessimistic prediction was set back, as the world experienced a large increase in resources and agricultural production (the “green” revolution),  new international means of exchange of subsistence goods and the emigration of part of the excess population to the United States or the colonies, where modern agricultural methods created new resources.

We thus went from two thirds of the world’s inhabitants suffering from malnutrition in 1950, to one in 7 by the year 2000, while over the same period the global population grew from  two and a half billion to over six billion.

Nonetheless, natural constraint re-emerged from 2009 onwards: the green revolution has resulted in the depletion of soils and groundwater aquifers.

The prospect of an exhaustion of fossil fuels in the short and medium terms is considered by many increasingly likely, particularly as a consequence of a large increase in the production of goods and services.

However, it is interesting to compare two historical cases:

1960: 3 billion inhabitants, 2 billion suffering from malnutrition (i.e. 66%).

2000: 6 billion inhabitants, 800 million suffering from malnutrition (i.e. 13.3%).

Malthus’ pessimistic predictions were promptly set back by the industrial revolution and the green revolution. Whether his analysis remains structurally valid in the long term remains to be seen.

Under the conditions as set out by Malthus, mathematically, it is maintained that it will not be possible for the global population to increase constantly and that governments will eventually have to  intervene, one way or another – demographic transition being less painful, but requiring two or three generations.

In Malthus  we find the idea that infinite growth in a finite world… could end.

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THOMAS MALTHUS was first posted on July 22, 2012 at 4:13 pm.
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