Advocates and Opponents of Malthusian Theory

Malthus was homeschooled until he was accepted to Jesus College, Cambridge in 1784. While he was there, he won prizes in English, Latin and Greek. However, his primary subject was mathematics. Malthus was elected a fellow of Jesus College, and later became the curate of Albury. Because of that, he divided his time between Albury and Cambridge. A few years later, he wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population, in which he presented his theory on population growth. Malthus married Harriet Eckersall, one of his cousins, on April 12th, 1804 and had three children named Henry, Emily and Lucy. In this way, he practiced what he preached, as most families had several children at this time. In his essay, Malthus stated that while population grew exponentially (1, 2, 4, 8, 16) when unchecked, food supplies grew arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). This meant that at some point, food production would not be able to keep up with population growth, and the excess population would die off in some manner. Because of that, it was necessary to keep the population down by using “positive checks” and “negative checks” (Fonseca). “Positive checks” are checks that slow population growth by increasing the death rate, such as war, disease, and famine. “Negative checks” are checks that slow population growth by decreasing the birth rate, such as birth control, people marrying later, or simply deciding to have fewer children. Malthus believed that the population could be controlled by making education mandatory, and ending the Poor Laws, which provided money or jobs for the impoverished (Malthus).

The Anti-Malthusians disagree with Malthus’ assertion that population growth would need to be curbed, because trends show that high population growth does not decrease the amount of development, or because the population would control itself anyways, among other reasons. Malthus’ views attracted some opposition almost immediately, but the Anti-Malthusian movement came out more strongly starting in the middle of the 20^th century. Two major supporters of this idea are Ester Boserup and Julian Simon. Ester Boserup, a Danish economist, wrote The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change UnderPopulation Pressure. In this book, Boserup countered Malthus’ argument that the ability to supply food limited the size of the human population by counterarguing that the size of the population was what determined the type of food production or agriculture was used (Federico). In the book, Boserup states that initially, the most primitive of societies get food by hunting and gathering. Afterwards, they begin slash and burn farming, as it is a very efficient form of farming when not overused. Societies then proceed to farm in massive quantities to increase output. Boserup claims that this trend shows that as the population size increases, the method of farming will change to adapt to the needs of the growing population. Julian Simon, who was a professor at the University of Maryland, argues that most of the current negative trends that people attribute to population growth aren’t even negative (Munson). He believes that global warming, pollution, and depletion of the ozone layer either aren’t really happening or aren’t actually affecting us. He also stated that some things, such certain types of pollution, actually weren’t getting worse, but that the output of pollution was declining. His main idea, which many Anti-Malthusians base their ideas on, is that because humans themselves are a resource, having a larger population means that there are more minds that could invent new technologies to keep supporting a larger and larger population. They dismiss the idea of scarcity of resources by saying comparing the price of resources now with previous prices, while adjusting for inflation. For example, most resources nowadays are much cheaper relative to wages than they were before. Since modern economics tells us that higher supply causes cheaper products, this implies that our production of resources is not waning at all.