- Malthus based his ideas about population and food on two basic premises.
1) Food is necessary to sustain life
2) Human sexual instinct is constant.
- Starting with these two premises, Malthus built an argument that the
- population if unchecked would double every 25 years (about one
- generation)
Population would progress geometrically
Food production would be limited arithmetically
More land would be required for production;
- fertile tracts of land would be employed out of necessity, and these less- fertile
- lands would yield fewer crops.
- As more and more workers cultivate the lands more intensively, the productivity
- of the added worker also declines
- Malthus used the economic principle, the law of diminishing returns, to explain why growth in
- food production would be limited to arithmetical increases from one generation to the next.
- Each generation’s food production increases by an amount equal to the original quantity.
The World in a balance
- Malthus used the economic principle, the law of diminishing returns, to explain why growth in food production would be limited to arithmetical increases from one generation to the next.
- Each generation’s food production increases by an amount equal to the original quantity.
Departure From Smith:
- Whereas Adam Smith argued that increasing production and subsequent rise in wages (law of population) would bring about increasing prosperity, Malthus argued that: the workers’ improved standard of living would reduce infant mortality rates, which would have the effect of increasing the population at a faster rate than the means of subsistence.
Proposals
- Checks to Population: death rates, war, famine, disease and epidemics
- Preventive checks: reduce birth rate through sexual abstinence and late marriage. Developments that have changed this circumstance in the West:
- Technological applications in agriculture, known collectively as the Green revolution.
- Urbanization and individuation has had a negative effect on the birth rate.
The World in a balance
- What are the various challenges facing the populations of India, Kenya, and Japan.
- What are the issues facing each country? What does the population pyramid for each country look like and why?
- How might each country’s issues be addressed?
- In 2050, there will be approximately nine billion people in the world, according to the most widely accepted estimate. What problems this might create for developing countries.
- What challenges will industrialized nations face?
- What problems will a nation like Japan, with a declining population face?
