Before you read on: what did Thomas Malthus argue would happen if population grew without any check?
Malthus held that unchecked population grows faster than food, until hunger, disease or later marriage holds it back.
- Lived
- Born February 1766 near Dorking, Surrey; died 29 December 1834 near Bath
- Nationality
- English
- Work
- Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and a Church of England clergyman; from 1805, professor of history and political economy at the East India Company's college at Haileybury, Hertfordshire
- Key works
- An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; expanded 1803; sixth edition 1826); An Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent (1815); Principles of Political Economy (1820)
- School
- Classical economics, alongside Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill
What Malthus was reacting to
In the 1790s, writers such as William Godwin in England and the Marquis de Condorcet in France believed society could be improved almost without limit.
Malthus wrote his 1798 Essay to answer Godwin and Condorcet. He argued that any society that made life easier would see its population grow until food ran short again.
Malthus's key ideas
Can you name Malthus's four key ideas?
Malthus held that population, left unchecked, grows in a geometric ratio (1, 2, 4, 8 ...) while food can grow only in an arithmetic ratio (1, 2, 3, 4 ...). Population therefore tends to press against the limit of the food supply.
Can you think of an example?
Malthus noted that the young United States had been doubling its population every 25 years.
A preventive check lowers the birth rate, for example when people delay marriage because they cannot yet afford a family. Malthus called late marriage, with abstinence until then, moral restraint. A positive check raises the death rate, through famine, disease or war.
Can you think of an example?
A couple who save before marrying are a preventive check. A famine is a positive check.
As population grows, farming spreads to poorer land. The price of corn rises to cover the cost on the worst land in use, and owners of better land collect the surplus as rent. Malthus set this out in 1815, and Ricardo built on it.
Can you think of an example?
When a growing town needs more grain, farmers plough hillsides. Grain prices rise to cover the hillside cost, and valley landowners gain.
Malthus argued that a whole economy can produce more than people are willing to buy. He introduced the term effective demand, and warned that saving pushed too far would weaken the motive to produce.
Can you think of an example?
If landlords save most of their rents, Malthus held, goods can go unsold across the economy, a general glut.