Does Malthus’ theory explain English population history? Malthus’ theory have obviously survived 2 centuries since his First Essay was namelessly published, moreover even today they are an intellectual force to be taken into account. The aim of this paper is to determine and to explore the role of Malthus’ ideas for explaining English population history. Malthus lived in England at the period when mercantilist demographic ideas of defending domestic production as well as enlarging population growth were criticized. It was primarily caused both by the development of Britain as a trading power and by increasing strength of the middle class. In fact, mercantilism was inherent to centralized and autocratic states where it stayed much longer. Malthus created the First Essay when population possibly grew twice the rate of the period when the Wealth of Nations appeared (12%-growth per decade comparing with previous 6%) (Caldwell (a) 479).
At that time, England had Poor Law Amendment Act that resulted in putting on the cost of making provisions for the poor and additional cost for their children in monetary estimate.
It also was an important political question because of inflation connected with the French Wars. Malthus wrote at the period when adults from Western countries apparently begin to understand the larger family was the more burdens it was necessary to carry, and when some after consideration started used contraception to lower family size (Caldwell (b) 675).
The Essay on Population and Economic Growth
... debate on the relationship between population and economic growth could be traced back to Malthus. According to Malthus, population tends to grow geometrically, whereas ... Even though the nexus between population development and economic development has received extensive attention in the earlier period, it seems a stylized ...
It is fundamental that Malthus discerned a self-regulating system providing an explanation for population fluctuations. The system that was finally summarized through all species by Charles Darwin. Fertility of human beings was so high that it could without any difficulty take the lead over the increase in food making. This would result in starvation and a growth of mortality, returning population growth back to the point of food supply (Woude et al. 17).
The kind of crises were usually prevented a “precautionary check” (marriage was either delayed or prevented, reducing in such a way the level of childbearing).
There were also some other “positive checks”, particularly outside Christian Europe: epidemic diseases, prostitution, warfare, polygamy, as well as abortion, contraception, and infanticide. When some check declined, the others would unavoidably become stronger (Caldwell & Schindlmayr 183).
This model was more complex than this easy description proposes, and there were some extra complications brought a political message. Despite Malthus considered that the societal rate of mortality had been the same for centuries, he mentioned that in a class society, the poor were distinguished by the highest rate of mortality and had to die first in a case of food crisis. Moreover, the more inexperienced were, the more probably it was to reject the preventive check and to get married as soon as there was the possibility of providing children with the barest food.
Thus, the financial transfers guaranteed by the Poor Laws represented an access to food and encouragement to get married at younger age and breed faster (Bonar 94).
The extra children put more stress on the substance supply and heightened the price, thus renewing population equilibrium making it more difficult for other society classes, particularly those that were a little bit above them, to buy substances, and increasing in such a way their mortality. Thus, charitable operating of the Poor Laws did nothing to decrease the rate of mortality or suffering but extended the conditions to other society classes. To make such families carry responsibility, their derelict illegal children should be permitted to die (Malthus cited in Glass 214).
Such interpretation eventually resulted in the Poor Law of 1834 with its foundation of urban workhouses to substitute village outdoor relief. To conclude it is important to mention that all who deals with the problems of the human environment are intellectual offspring of Malthus. And whether representing “anti-Malthusianism,” “neo-Malthusianism,” or just agnosticism, we deal with the equation of population with technology and resources, which solves the issues of the human environment. Despite the fact that nowadays the variables of Malthusian equation has changed (farmland and food per person in 1798; energy in the 1850s; resource shortage and promotion of amenity resources and the pollution-absorbing potential of the environment by the 50s of the 20th century; the fundamental life-support systems and the chemical cycles of the biosphere in 1972; losses in the life diversity and genetic information today) (Kates 43) Malthusianism didn’t disappear, it just renewed in a larger, international context. Works Cited Bonar, James, ed.
The Term Paper on Population And Food Developing Countries
The United Nations projects that the global population, currently at 6 billion, will peak at about 10 billion in the next century and then stabilize or even decline. (popindex. Princeton. edu) A question immediately following the statement, can the Earth feed that many people It is understood that even if food crops increase sufficiently, other renewable resources, including many fisheries and ...
Malthus and His Work. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966. Caldwell, John C. (a) “The Delayed Western Fertility Decline: An Examination of English-Speaking Countries.” Population and Development Review 25.3 (1999): 479. Caldwell, John C. (b) “Malthus and the Less Developed World: The Pivotal Role of India”.
Population and Development Review 24.4 (1998): 675. Caldwell, John C., and Thomas Schindlmayr. “Historical Population Estimates: Unraveling the Consensus.” Population and Development Review 28.2 (2002): 183. Glass, D. V., ed. Introduction to Malthus. London: Watts, 1953.
Kates, Robert W. “Population, Technology, and the Human Environment: A Thread through Time.” Daedalus 125.3 (1996): 43. Woude, A. M. Van Der, Akira Hayami, and Jan De Vries, eds. Urbanization in History: A Process of Dynamic Interactions.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
