An Essay on the Principle of Population

by Thomas Robert Malthus and George Thomas Bettany

Book Overview

As the world's population continues to grow at a frighteningly rapid rate, Malthus's classic warning against overpopulation gains increasing importance. An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) examines the tendency of human numbers to outstrip their resources, and argues that checks in the form of poverty, disease, and starvation are necessary to keep societies from moving beyond their means of subsistence. Malthus's simple but powerful argument...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0199540454
• ISBN13: 9780199540457
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Was Malthus Right?

Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population has been the subject of much debate. 19th Century economists accepted The Population Principle as fact. 20th century economists have arrived at such a strong consensus against the Population Principle, that the subject is considered as closed. The main reason for this consensus is failure to realize Malthus' dire predictions. Declines in birth rates among prosperous nations indicate that Malthus was wrong. An Essay on the Principle of Population is important today for several reasons. First, it is an important part of history. Second, population issues still loom large. Also, historian Ross Emmett has reinterpreted Malthus in a way that fits better with world experience. My own reading of An Essay on the Principle of Population fits with Emmett's reinterpretation of Malthus. Malthus reasoned through one of the biggest issues. This is a classic of political economy, worthy of careful consideration. Don't listed to those who say Malthus has been proven wrong. Read this book and judge its merits yourself.

Scary.

That Thomas Robert Malthus was a cleric might startle some readers, who could look on his pessimism as something that is more typical of a man of hard, God-less science. Malthus was clearly, once one examines deep within the heart of his treatise on overpopulation, a theist, and a hard-hearted "God Disposes" sort of one at that. Underneath everything, we can sense Malthus' view being, "ultimately what does this brief, cluttered, hopeless world matter next to eternal life in Heaven?" Malthus' statements about the human race breeding past its ability to feed itself, have merit, but he failed to take into account the capacity of science to be humanity's deliverer. Revolutions in agriculture, medicine, social health, as well as many other fields, not excluding simple advances in birth control, have to an extent nullified the ABSOLUTE nature of Thomas Malthus' ideas, and instead, alas, made them true primarily in the 21st century for the Third World alone. Malthus was a man both in and ahead of his time--in it because he had but to open his eyes and see starvation and orphaned children, poverty and overcrowding in the slums, and ahead of his time in that he looked forward and forecast a dire warning to the world of a time when the horrors of this state might over-sweep civilization and strangle it to death with numbers alone. Malthus was a cruel man on one hand, advocating the selective starvation of a segment of society. He totally opposed any form of welfare, charity or aid to those who could not contribute to their own upkeep. Those types, he argued, decayed human society and lead it closer to the nightmare state he detailed in his work. He cited wars, plagues, famines, as servants of humanity, in that they thinned the ranks and tried to keep us from reproducing ourselves into extinction. Malthus' fearful prognostications might yet see its consummation one day and some may say that in various parts of the world we are already seeing it, but I take the stance that if our species has one great gift, it is its intellect, and that intellect might-if we are motivated by conditions made intolerable--yet serve to deliver us from even our self-created scenarios of mad destruction.

Bigger than life

The reverend Thomas Robert Malthus is one of these figures that influences, in his case for good, generations to come. The concepts he developed, which is not the same to say that he discovered the fundamentals of these concepts, are of such working capability, that they can be used even today on a daily basis, some 200 + years after the first publication of his seminal and most important book, certainly one of the most important texts of all times. His name turned itself into an important adjective, malthusian, sometimes associated to a lot of misconceptions and misuse, mainly due to undue interpretations of things Malthus did not said, or did write with a different manifest meaning. Troughout his lifetime, Malthus, already a recognised and famous man, had to revise a lot of editions of his works in order to precise what he meant to say. Dipping down into the original malthusian fountain is, in this way, a pretty much refreshing and inspiring experience, shunning aside the many bad interpretations attached to his original thinking by second hand reading. As a plus, the book presents at the end two extremely beatifully written chapters on the philosophical reasons behind Good and Evil, a necessary explanation in a revolutionary theory that could be interpreted as intrinsically evilsome. To add content and lustre to all Malthus wrote, one has to remind that the greatest economist of the XX century, John Maynard Keynes, felt himself philosophically and theoretically affiliated with Malthus in a very great scale, to the point of saying that, if Malthus had been better understood, the world would not had to suffer the weaknesses of David Ricardo's theories.

Taking Account of Malthus

"The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years." --Thomas R. Malthus, Principle of PopulationWhen I filled out and mailed my census questionnaire in 2000, I reflected upon Malthus's sobering classic, An Essay on the Principle of Population. When I was in elementary school in the 1960's, I remember reading optimistic reports in my Weekly Reader that new high-yielding crops would make it possible to meet the food requirements of the world. If those utopians were familiar with Malthus's essay, their visions for the future welfare of humanity might have been less optimistic. However, if there was over-optimism then, it has largely vanished now.Who has not viewed educational television programs discussing the severe stresses on the global environment due to our excessive consumption of both renewable and nonrenewable resources? Environmentalists highlight the dire energy and environmental problems facing us in the future. The poorer countries would also like to enjoy the benefits of industrialization that will, of course, further tax our resources and stress our environment. Even if we assume the environmentalists exaggerate our circumstances, even the scientifically illiterate comprehend that the capacity of the earth to support life is finite. In the face of such problems, Malthus's three "incontrovertible truths" are as relevant today as the day he penned them:"That population cannot increase without the means of subsistence, is a proposition so evident, that it needs no illustration."That population does invariably increase, where there are the means of subsistence, the history of every people that have ever existed will abundantly prove."And, that the superior power of population cannot be checked, without producing misery or vice, the ample portion of these too bitter ingredients in the cup of human life, and the continuance of the physical causes that seem to have produced them, bear too convincing a testimony."Both liberals and conservatives have hated Malthus's essay. It dumps cold water on humanitarian hopes and can be used in support of abortion rights and government restrictions on family size. To our peril, we would like to live, aided by technology, in denial of Malthus's postulate, "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio." To our endangerment, we would prefer to luxuriate in ignorance of his observation that his postulate "implies a strong and constantly operating check on population fromn the difficulty of subsistence." Says Malthus, "This difficulty must fall some where; and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind." Where will this "difficulty of subsistence" put a check on our currently growing world population?When I was born in 1957, the world population was just under 2.9 billion. It is now over 6 billion. The U

A book for those interested in sociology or economy.

This book by Malthus is essential for the evolution of the economy thought. Its principles were taken by others economist and sociologist to make their own theories, David Ricardo for example, one of the most important authors of the clasic school. Malthus recomendations had influenced remarkable politicians, who change importants laws in England based on Malthus ideas. A must for everyone interested in the early economy books.