Malthus’ Population Theory An Irony in the Annals of Science

Australian Economic Papers, 1992

Research supported by SSHRCC and the University of Manitoba. The author is grateful to all who have made comments on previous drafts, especially Robert Dorfman, Samuel Hollander, Donald Winch and two anonymous referees. 203 204 AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC PAPERS JUNE to grow. Arguments forged in the heat of polemic are tested by criticism. Those which prove robust may eventually count as 'contributions to knowledge'. The economic analysis of the Essay on Population is founded upon the famous 'ratios' of food and population growth. The 'ratios' imply diminishing returns, as Marshall (1920, p.179, n.1) maintained against Cannan (1903, p.144). Diminishing returns without a production function are like a grin without a cat. Given competitive factor pricingwhich Malthus accepteda diminishing-returns production function implies rent. Seventeen years after the First Essay Malthus (1815) was among those who discovered the relation between diminishing returns and rent. Samuelson (1947, pp.296-98) was the first to specify a Malthusian production function. Five years later Stigler (1952, p.190) showed that the ratios implied a logarithmic form of this function.

2017

Thomas Malthus has become, over more than two centuries, one of the most frequently referenced economists with regard to demographics. As the author of An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), he was the main disseminator of one of the most intriguing theories of population growth. His thinking has influenced many – from contemporaries, such as David Ricardo – to most of the “neo-Malthusian” schools of thought from the mid1960s to the present day. This paper addresses some aspects of population theory discussed prior to the Essay, and the impact that this work had – with respect to both its influence and the critiques and replicas that his work suffered throughout the 19 th and 20 th centuries. The paper’s purpose is to draw up guidelines for a more precise interpretation of Malthus’ contribution to demographic, economic and, finally, social thought.

Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2012

Aristotle defined science as the cognition of causes. Although some modern historians prefer not to speak about laws of history, no one denies the presence of cause and effect relations in the historical process: denial of the causal determination of past events would have deprived history of the right to call itself a science. The famous sociologist E. Durkheim wrote that his tory can be viewed as a science only to the degree to which it explains the world [1, p. II]. Is modern historical science able to explain the world? In my opinion, at least partially, it does explain the world because it makes it possible to single out the main causes that determine historical events, which are called the driving forces of history or factors of the historical process. Although historians have been unable thus far to explain many details of past events, the role of one of such factors, demographic, seems to have been studied to a sufficient extent at present. The most important stage in the development of demography, the beginning of studies on the problem of overpopulation, is associated with the name of the English scientist of the 18th-19th centuries T. Malthus. The main thesis formulated by Malthus is that "the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence." Population growth leads to food shortages, which provoke a rise in prices and rents and a decrease in real wages and consumption. In turn, a decrease in consumption stops population growth or reduces it down to a level determined by the means of subsistence (or below). Under these condi tions, food becomes available, wages increase, and consumption grows; however, the process then repeats itself, and, as a consequence, population increases and decreases alternately [2]. Malthus' ideas were accepted by the most promi nent economists of "classical economics," such as J. B. Say and J. Mill, while D. Ricardo included these provisions in his theory of wages, a consequence of which was that the overarching theory was called Malthusian-Ricardian [3]. Importantly, both Malthus and Ricardo initially spoke about repeated variations in population, i.e., about demographic cycles. Note that the oscillation of population should be accompa nied by the oscillation of prices, rent, profit, and real wages, which led to the conclusion that the entire eco nomic process was oscillatory by nature (Fig. 1). World War I, famine, and the revolutions of 1917-1922 gave new life to Malthus' ideas. For example, the outstanding economist J.M. Keynes, having analyzed statistical data, showed that, on the eve of the war, Europe had shown signs of overpopulation, and this

Recent Economic Thought, 1988

It has been a long time since the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus has been seen primarily as the discoverer of the principal cause of poverty as well as the nature of its effective cure. Writing in 1892, after the Courts of Law had been forced to deal with neo-Malthusianism, Charles Drysdale of the Malthusian League began his introduction to The Ufe and Writings ofT. R. Malthus as follows: The Lord Chief Justice of England has pronounced that it is an irrefragable truth, and that all parties who have studied such questions know, since the days of the Rev. T. R. Malthus, that the great cause of indigence is the tendency thi.t population has to increase faster than agriculture can furnish food [Drysdale, 1892, p. 1]. Nor do we consider the roster of eminent names who have accepted the truth of the Malthusian theory of population as sufficient grounds for thinking of this theory as Malthus' principal contribution to economics. The great Principle of Population has been examined carefully and accepted as a splendid discovery by the master minds of all countries since the discoverer's death in 1834. To say that it is looked upon as axiomatic by the two Mills, by

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