Thomas Robert Malthus, FRS (13 February, 1766 – 29 December, 1834), an English demographer and political economist, has become best-known for his influential views on population growth.

Modern commentators generally refer to him as Thomas Malthus, but during his lifetime he went by his middle name, Robert.

Thomas Robert Malthus, the sixth of seven children born to Daniel and Henrietta Malthus, came into a prosperous family, with his father a personal friend of the philosopher David Hume and an acquaintance of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The young Malthus was educated at home in Bramcote, Nottinghamshire and at the Dissenting Academy, Warrington until his admission to Jesus College, Cambridge in 1784. There he studied many subjects and took prizes in English declamation, Latin and Greek, but his principal subject was mathematics. He earned a masters degree in 1791 and was elected a fellow of Jesus College two years later. In 1797, he was ordained and became an Anglican country parson.

Malthus married his first-cousin once removed Harriet Eckersall on April 12 1804 and had three children: Henry, Emily and Lucy. In 1805 he became Britain's first professor in political economy at the East India Company College at Hertford Heath, near Hertford in Hertfordshire, now known as Haileybury. His students affectionately referred to him as "Pop", or "Population" Malthus. One student in particular, Graham Fischer, wrote a responsive essay concerning population growth and criticizing many of the ideas proposed by Thomas Malthus. It was later publicized by Dr. Tom Klein, a future professor of his. In 1818, he was selected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Thomas Robert Malthus refused to have his portrait painted until 1833 because of embarrassment over a [cleft lip]. After surgical correction, Malthus then became considered "handsome." Malthus also had a cleft palate (inside his mouth) that affected his speech. These cleft related birth defects were relatively common in his family. Malthus was buried at Bath Abbey in England.

Malthus largely developed his views in reaction to the optimistic opinions of his father and his associates, notably Rousseau. Malthus's essay was also in response to the views of the Marquis de Condorcet. In An Essay on the Principle of Population, first published in 1798, Malthus made the famous prediction that population would outrun food supply, leading to a decrease in food per person. (Case & Fair, 1999: 790).

The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.

This "Principle of Population" depended on the idea that population if unchecked increases at a geometric rate (i.e. 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.), whereas the food supply grows at an arithmetic rate (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.).

Malthus suggested that only natural causes (such as accidents and old age), misery (war, pestilence, plague, and above all famine) [Book I, Ch. 2], moral restraint and vice (which for Malthus included infanticide, murder, contraception and homosexuality) could check excessive population-growth. See Malthusian catastrophe for more information.

Malthus favoured moral restraint (including late marriage and sexual abstinence) as a check on the growth of population. Note, however, that Malthus proposed this only for the working and poor classes. Thus the lower social classes took a great deal of responsibility for societal ills, according to his theory. In his work An Essay on the Principle of Population, he proposed the gradual abolition of poor laws. Essentially what this resulted in was the promotion of legislation which degenerated the conditions of the poor in England, lowering their population but effectively decreasing poverty.

Malthus himself noted that many people misrepresented his theory; he took pains to point out that he did not just predict future catastrophe. He argued: "...this constantly subsisting cause of periodical misery has existed ever since we have had any histories of mankind, does exist at present, and will for ever continue to exist, unless some decided change takes place in the physical constitution of our nature."

Thus, Malthus regarded his Principle of Population as an explanation of the past and of the present situation of humanity, as well as a prediction of the future.

Some have argued that Malthus did not fully recognise the human capacity to increase food supply. On this subject Malthus wrote "The main peculiarity which distinguishes man from other animals, is the means of his support, is the power which he possesses of very greatly increasing these means."

Malthus, at least in his first edition, predicted continuing famines in Europe; a prediction which has proven false.

Elwell states that Malthus made no specific prediction regarding the future; and that what some interpret as prediction merely constituted Malthus's illustration of the power of geometric (or exponential) population growth compared to the arithmetic growth of food production.

Rather than predicting the future, the Essay offers an evolutionary social theory. Eight major points regarding evolution appear in the 1798 Essay:

# subsistence severely limits population-level # when the means of subsistence increases, population increases # population-pressures stimulate increases in productivity # increases in productivity stimulate further population-growth # since this productivity can never keep up with the potential of population growth for long, population requires strong checks to keep it in line with carrying-capacity # individual cost/benefit decisions regarding sex, work, and children determine the expansion or contraction of population and production # checks will come into operation as population exceeds subsistence-level # the nature of these checks will have significant effect on the rest of the sociocultural system — Malthus points specifically to misery, vice, and poverty

This theory of Malthus has had great influence on evolutionary theory, both in biology (as acknowledged by Darwin and Wallace) and in the social sciences (compare Herbert Spencer). Malthus's population theory has also profoundly affected the modern day ecological-evolutionary social theory of Gerhard Lenski and Marvin Harris. He can thus be regarded as a key contributing element of the canon of socioeconomic theory.

Malthus's theory of population has proven very influential. In 1978 Michael H. Hart published a book called The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, which placed Malthus at number 80 in this worldwide ranking. (Ironically, Malthus did not make the top 100 Greatest Britons.)

At Haileybury, Malthus developed a theory of demand-supply mismatches which he called gluts. Considered ridiculous at the time, his theory foreshadowed later theories about the Great Depression, and the works of admirer and economist John Maynard Keynes.

Before Malthus, commentators had regarded high fertility as an economic advantage, since it increased the number of workers available to the economy. Malthus, however, looked at fertility from a new perspective and convinced most economists that even though high fertility might increase the gross output, it tended to reduce output per capita. Malthus has been widely admired by, and has influenced, a number of other notable economists such as David Ricardo (whom Malthus knew personally) and Alfred Marshall.

A distinguished early convert to Malthusianism, British Prime Minister William Pitt The Younger (in office: 1783 - 1801 and 1804 - 1806), after reading the work of Malthus promptly withdrew a bill he had introduced that called for the extension of Poor Relief. Pitt also launched the first modern census in the UK (conducted in 1801). In the 1830s Malthus's writings strongly influenced Whig reforms which overturned Tory paternalism and brought in the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834.

Concerns about Malthus's theory helped promote the idea of a national population census in the UK. Government official John Rickman became instrumental in the first modern British census being conducted in 1801.

Malthus took pride in the fact that some of the earliest converts to his population theory included the leading creationist and natural theologian, Archdeacon William Paley whose Natural Theology first appeared in 1802. Both men regarded Malthus's Principle of Population as additional proof of the existence of a deity.

Ironically, given Malthus's own opposition to contraception, his work exercised a strong influence on Francis Place (1771–1854), whose Neo-Malthusian movement became the first to advocate contraception. Place published his Proofs on the Principle of Population in 1822.

Malthus's idea of man’s “struggle for existence” had decisive influence on Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. Other scientists related this idea to plants and animals which helped to define a piece of the evolutionary puzzle. This struggle for existence of all creatures is the catalyst by which natural selection produces the “survival of the fittest”, a phrase coined by Herbert Spencer (Spiegel 282). Darwin, in his book The Origin of Species, called his theory an application of the doctrines of Malthus in an area without the complicating factor of human intelligence. Darwin, a life-long admirer of Malthus, referred to Malthus as "that great philosopher" (Letter to J.D. Hooker 5th June, 1860) and wrote in his notebook that "Malthus on Man should be studied". Wallace called Malthus's essay "...the most important book I read..." and considered it "the most interesting coincidence" that both he and Darwin were independently led to the theory of evolution through reading Malthus.

Thanks to Malthus, Darwin recognized the significance of competition between populations of the same species, as well as competition between species. Malthusian thinking on population also explained how an incipient species could become a full-blown species in a very short time frame. The significance of Malthus's influence on Darwin was perhaps best highlighted by Robert M. Young (Darwin's Metaphor: Nature's Place in Victorian Culture, 1965), Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies at Sheffield University, England.

The first Director-General of UNESCO, evolutionist and humanist Julian Huxley, wrote of "The Crowded World" in his Evolutionary Humanism (1964), calling for a "World Population Policy". Huxley was openly critical of Communist and Roman Catholic attitudes to birth control , population control and overpopulation. Today world organizations such as the United Nations Population Fund acknowledge that the debate over how many people the Earth can support effectively started with Malthus. Julian's brother, author Aldous Huxley, in his book Brave New World, refers to Malthusian theories on population. In Brave New World, the popular form of birth control is known as the Malthusian Belt. It is mentioned frequently by the females in the novel including the female protagonist Lenina Crowne.

Malthus continues to have considerable influence to this day. Paul R. Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb(1968), furnishes a famous recent example of this. Ehrlich predicted, in the late 1960s, that hundreds of millions would die from a coming overpopulation crisis in the 1970s, and that by 1980 life expectancy in the United States would be only 42 years. Other famous examples are the 1972 book The Limits to Growth from the self-styled Club of Rome, and the Global 2000 report to the then President of the United States of America Jimmy Carter. Science fiction author Isaac Asimov issued many appeals for population control reflecting the perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.

More recently, a school of "neo-Malthusian" scholars has begun to link population and economics to a third variable, political change and political violence, and to show how the variables interact. In the early 1980s, James Goldstone linked population variables to the English Revolution and David Lempert devised a model of demographics, economics, and political change in the multi-ethnic country of Mauritius. Goldstone has since modeled other revolutions by looking at demographics and economics and Lempert has explained Stalin's purges and the Russian Revolution of 1917 in terms of demographic factors that drive political economy. Ted Robert Gurr has also modeled political violence, such as in the Palestinian territories and in Rwanda/Congo (two of the world's regions of most rapidly growing population) using similar variables in several comparative cases. These approaches compete with explanations of events as a result of political ideology and suggest that political ideology is really a creation that follows demographic forces.

Malthus is widely regarded as the founder of modern demography. Malthus had proposed his Principle of Population as a universal natural law for all species, not just humans. Instead, today, his theory is widely regarded as only an approximate natural law of population dynamics for all species. This is because it can be proven that nothing can sustain exponential growth at a constant rate indefinitely.

Nonetheless, Malthus continues to openly inspire and influence futuristic visions, such as those of K Eric Drexler relating to space advocacy and molecular nanotechnology. As Drexler put it in Engines of Creation: "In a sense, opening space will burst our limits to growth, since we know of no end to the universe. Nevertheless, Malthus was essentially right."

Malthus has also inspired retired physics professor, Albert Bartlett, to lecture over 1,500 times on "Arithmetic, Population, and Energy", promoting sustainable living and explaining the mathematics of overpopulation.

The Malthusian growth model now bears Malthus's name. The logistic function of Pierre Francois Verhulst results in the well-known S-curve. Yet the logistic growth model favored by so many critics of the Malthusian growth model was created by Verhulst in 1838 only after reading Malthus's essay.

Malthus's arithmetic model of food-supply is disputed by some, as it is arguable that food supply has kept pace with population for the past two centuries.

Malthus's position as professor at the British East India Company training college, which he held until his death, gave his theories considerable influence over Britain's administration of India through most of the 19th century, continuing even under the Raj after the company's dissolution in 1858. The most significant result of this influence was that the official response to India's periodic famines, which had been occurring every decade or two for centuries, became one of not entirely benign neglect: the famines were regarded as necessary to keep the "excess" population in check. In some cases even private efforts to transport food into famine-stricken areas were forbidden. However, this "Malthusian" policy did not take account of the enormous economic damage done by such famines through loss of human capital, collapse of credit structures and financial institutions, and the destruction of physical capital (especially in the form of livestock), social infrastructure and commercial relationships. The presumably unintended consequence was that production often did not recover to pre-famine levels in the affected areas for a decade or more after each disaster, well after the lost population had been regained. Malthusian theory also influenced British policies in Ireland during the 1840s, in which relief measures during the Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849) were neglected and mass starvation was seen as a natural and inevitable consequence of the island's supposed over-population.

Although many people assume that Malthus's pessimistic views gave economics the nickname "the Dismal Science", the phrase was actually coined by the historian Thomas Carlyle in reference to laissez-faire economic theories in general.

William Godwin responded to Malthus's criticisms of his own arguments with On Population (1820).

Other theoretical and political critiques of Malthus and Malthusian thinking emerged soon after the publication of the first Essay on Population, most notably in the work of the reformist industrialist Robert Owen , the essayist William Hazlitt (Malthus And The Liberties Of The Poor, 1807) and economists John Stuart Mill and Nassau William Senior (Two Lectures on Population , 1829), and moralist William Cobbett. Also of note was True Law of Population (1845) by politician Thomas Doubleday, an adherent of Cobbett's views.

The highpoint of opposition to Malthus's ideas came in the middle of the nineteenth century with the writings of Karl Marx (Capital, 1867) and Friedrich Engels (Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, 1844), who argued that what Malthus saw as the problem of the pressure of population on the means of production actually represented the pressure of the means of production on population. They thus viewed it in terms of their concept of the labor reserve army. In other words, the seeming excess of population that Malthus attributed to the seemingly innate disposition of the poor to reproduce beyond their means was actually a product of the very dynamic of capitalist economy.

Engels called Malthus's hypothesis "...the crudest, most barbarous theory that ever existed, a system of despair which struck down all those beautiful phrases about love thy neighbour and world citizenship."

Evolutionist Ronald Fisher expressed criticism of the use of Malthus's theory as a basis for the theory of natural selection.http://books.google.com/books?id=6bLZQzDd0f4C&printsec=frontcover#PPA194,M1. John Maynard Smith was critical of Malthus's hypothesis, doubting that famine was the great leveler that Malthus insisted it was.

Some 19th-century economists believed that improvements in the division and specialization of labor, increased capital investment, and other factors had rendered some of Malthus's warnings implausible. In the absence of any improvement in technology or increase of capital equipment, an increased supply of labor may have a synergistic effect on productivity that overcomes the law of diminishing returns. As American land economist Henry George observed with characteristic piquancy in dismissing Malthus, "Both the jayhawk and the man eat chickens; but the more jayhawks, the fewer chickens, while the more men, the more chickens." Many 20th century economists, such as Julian Lincoln Simon, have also criticised Malthus's conclusions. They note that despite the predictions of Malthus and the Neo-Malthusians, massive geometric population growth in the 20th century has not resulted in a Malthusian catastrophe, largely due to the influence of technological advances and the expansion of the market economy, division of labor, and stock of capital goods. Such arguments are echoed by skeptical environmentalist, Bjørn Lomborg. Malthus is thus regarded by some such as British physicist John Maddox as a failed prophet of doom.

In The Malthus Factor: Population, Poverty, and Politics in Capitalist Development, anthropologist Eric Ross depicts Malthus's work as a rationalization of the social inequities produced by the Industrial Revolution, anti-immigration movements, the eugenics movement and the various international development movements.

Malthus argued that as wages increase within a country, the birthrate increases while the death rate decreases. He reasoned that high incomes allowed people to have sufficient means to raise their children such as feeding and clothing them thus resulting in greater desire to have more children which increases the population. In addition, high incomes also allowed people to be able to afford proper medication to fight off potentially harmful diseases thus decreasing the death rate. As a result, wage increases caused population to grow as the birthrate increases and the death rate decreases. He further argued that as the supply of labor increases with the increased population growth at a constant labor demand, the wages earned would decrease eventually to subsistence where the birthrate is equal to the death rate resulting in no population growth. However, the world generally has experienced quite a different result than the one Malthus predicted with his theory. During the late 19th and early 20th century, the population increased as did the wages, with the spread of the industrial revolution. Malthus assumed a constant labor demand in his assessment of England and in doing so he ignored the effects of industrialization. As the world became more industrialized, the level of technology and production grew causing an increase in labor demand. Thus, even though labor supply increased so did the demand for labor. In fact, the labor demand arguably increased more than the supply, as measured by the historically observed increase in real wages globally with population growth.

* Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol supposedly represented the (perceived) ideas of Malthus, famously illustrated by his answer he gives to why he refuses to donate to the poor and destitute: "If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population". * The final spoken line of Urinetown, the Musical is "Hail Malthus," before the final sung line ("That was our show!") and the curtain call. * In Robert A. Heinlein's novel, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the character Bernardo de la Paz says to Mannie: "This planet isn't crowded; it is just mismanaged...and the unkindest thing you can do for a hungry man is to give him food. 'Give.' Read Malthus. It is never safe to laugh at Dr. Malthus; he always has the last laugh." * In Aldous Huxley's novel, Brave New World, people generally regard fertility as a nuisance, as cloning has enabled the society to maintain the population in precisely the way the controllers want. The women, therefore, must take excessive amounts of contraceptives, which they carry with them at all times in a Malthusian belt. * In Season two of Sliders "Luck of the Draw" the parallel world is based on Thomas Malthus's over-population. * In John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman Dr. Grogan' says of Malthus: "For him the tragedy of homo sapiens is that the least fit to survive breed the most". * George R. R. Martin's novel Tuf Voyaging features a planet called S'uthlam (an anagram for Malthus) which constantly faces the danger of mass famine because of its rapidly expanding population.

* Cornucopian - the opposite of the Malthusian school of thought * List of scientific phenomena named after people * Food Race a related idea from Daniel Quinn * Limits to growth from the Club of Rome * Hypothetical future disasters * Black death * List of Bubonic plague outbreaks * List of countries by birth rate * List of countries by death rate * List of countries by fertility rate * List of coupled cousins * List of epidemics * List of famines - incomplete * Lists of people by cause of death * List of wars * Malthus (in demonology) * Malthusian Catastrophe * Malthusian Growth Model * Malthusianism * Medieval demography * NSSM 200 * Overpopulation * Social Darwinism - a related idea * World population * Giovanni Botero - a sixteenth century thinker whose work foreshadows Malthus's ideas on population catastrophe * Urinetown - Urinetown, the Musical. The last line of the 2001 Tony-Award winning Broadway musical is: "Hail Malthus!" The musical tells the story of a society that cannot sustain itself because of a scarcity of water, due to overconsumption. As a result the citizens have to pay to urinate.

* The Social Contract Press Vol. 8, No. 3; Spring, 1998 Malthus Bicentenary issue devoted entirely to Malthus * Negative Population Growth organization: a collection of essays for the Malthus Bicentenary * National Academics Forum, Australia: a collection of essays for the Malthus Bicentenary Conference, 1998 * Rohe, John F., A Bicentennial Malthusian Essay: Conservation, Population and the Indifference to Limits, Rhodes & Easton, Traverse City, MI. 1997

<References/>

* Case, Karl E. & Fair, Ray C. (1999). Principles of Economics (5th ed.). Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-961905-4. * Elwell, Frank W. (2001), A Commentary on Malthus's 1798 Essay on Population as Social Theory, The Edwin Mellon Press. * Hollander, Samuel (1997). The Economics of Thomas Robert Malthus. University of Toronto Press. * James, Patricia (1979). Population Malthus : his Life and Times. Londen : Routledge and Kegan Paul * Peterson, William (1999). Malthus, Founder Of Modern Demography (2nd ed.) Transaction. ISBN 0-7658-0481-6. * John Maddox, The Doomsday Syndrome - An Assault on Pessimism (1972). * David Lempert, A Demographic-Economic Explanation of Political Stability: Mauritius as a Microcosm,Eastern Africa Economic Review, Vol. 3 No. 1, 1987; and Daily Life in a Crumbling Empire, Columbia University Press/ Eastern European Monographs, 1996. * Ernst Mayr What evolution is (2001). Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-60741-3 * John Maynard Smith The Theory of Evolution (1958, 1966, 1975). Canto (Cambridge University Press) - (1993, 1995, 1997, 2000). ISBN 0-521-45128-0 * Elliot Sober The Nature Of Selection (1984). University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-76748-5. Also for the quote from Ronald Fisher. * Carl Zimmer Evolution - The Triumph of an Idea (2001). Harper Collins. ISBN 0-06-019906-7 * Evans, L.T. (1998). Feeding the Ten Billion - Plants and Population Growth. Cambridge University Press. Paperback, 247 pages. Dedicated to Malthus by the author. ISBN 0-521-64685-5. * Spiegel, Henry William. 1992. The Growth of Economic Thought. Durham: Duke University Press * Eric B. Ross (1998) The Malthus factor : population, poverty, and politics in capitalist development. Zed Books, London. ISBN 1-85649-564-7 * Korotayev A., Malkov A., Khaltourina D. Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Compact Macromodels of the World System Growth. Moscow: URSS, 2006. ISBN 5-484-00414-4 http://urss.ru/cgi-bin/db.pl?cp=&lang=en&blang=en&list=14&page=Book&id=34250. * Korotayev A., Malkov A., Khaltourina D. Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends. Moscow: URSS, 2006. ISBN 5-484-00559-0 http://urss.ru/cgi-bin/db.pl?lang=en&blang=en&page=Book&list=14&id=37484. * Korotayev A. & Khaltourina D. Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends in Africa. Moscow: URSS, 2006. ISBN 5-484-00560-4 http://urss.ru/cgi-bin/db.pl?cp=&lang=en&blang=en&list=14&page=Book&id=37485.

* EconLib-1798: An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1st edition, 1798. Library of Economics and Liberty. Free online, full-text searchable. * EconLib-1826: An Essay on the Principle of Population, 6th edition, 1826. Library of Economics and Liberty. Free online, full-text searchable. Malthus published a major revision to his first edition--his second edition--in 1803. His 6th edition, published 1826, and revising his various 2nd-5th editions, became his widely cited 6th and final revision. * * Malthus profile and extensive links * Theories of Overpopulation - refer section entitled Criticism of the Malthusian Theory. Catholic Encyclopedia website * More Food for More People But Not For All, and Not Forever United Nations Population Fund website * Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity by William Paley (1802). 12th edition (1809) Text published by University of Michigan (Humanities Text Initiative) * The Feast of Malthus by Garrett Hardin in The Social Contract (1998) * Online copies of several of Malthus's works * Malthus bibliography * Malthus biography by Nigel Malthus, a direct descendant of Malthus's brother Sydenham Malthus * The International Society of Malthus * Publications of the United Nations Population Division * An Essay on the Principle of Population by Malthus * Thomas Malthus at UCMP * The Massive Movement to Marginalise the Modern Malthusian Message article by Professor Albert Bartlett * Online chapter MALTHUS AND THE EVOLUTIONISTS:THE COMMON CONTEXT OF BIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL THEORY from Darwin's Metaphor: Nature's Place in Victorian Culture by Professor Robert M. Young (1985, 1988, 1994). Cambridge University Press. * MALTHUS ON MAN - IN ANIMALS NO MORAL RESTRAINT article about Malthus's influence on Darwin, by Professor Robert M. Young * A Better Earth * Exponentialist website dedicated to Malthus * Gwynne Dyer: Population bomb still ticking away - 20 Mar 2007 - NZ Herald * The population bomb is ticking again | EnergyBulletin.net * T. Robert Malthus's Homepage



Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert Malthus, Thomas Robert