The Danish Peace Academy

Malthus' Essay On The Principle Of Population

John Avery, H.C. Ørsted Institute, University of Copenhagen

Summary

The famous book on population by T. Robert Malthus grew out of his conversations with his father, Daniel, who was an enthusiastic believer in the optimistic philosophy of the Enlightenment. Like Godwin and Condorcet, Daniel Malthus believed that the application of scientific progress to agriculture and industry would inevitably lead humanity forward to a golden age. His son, Robert, was more pessimistic. He pointed out that the benefits of scientific progress would probably be eaten up by a growing population. At his father’s urging, Robert Malthus developed his ideas into a book, the first edition of which was published anonymously in 1798. In this classic book, Malthus pointed out that under optimum conditions, every biological population, including that of humans, is capable of increasing exponentially.

For humans under optimum conditions, the population can double every twenty-five years, quadruple every fifty years and increase by a factor of 8 every seventy-five years. It can grow by a factor of 16 every century, and by a factor of 256 every two centuries, and so on.

Obviously, human populations cannot increase at this rate for very long, since if they did, the earth would be completely choked with people in a very few centuries. Therefore, Malthus pointed out, various forces must be operating to hold the population in check. Malthus listed first the “positive checks” to population growth - disease, famine, and war. In addition, he listed “preventive checks” - birth control (which he called “Vice”), late marriage, and “Moral Restraint”. The positive checks raise the death rate, while the preventive checks lower fertility.

According to Malthus, a population need not outrun its food supply, provided that late marriage, birth control or moral restraint are practiced; but without these less painful checks, the population will quickly grow to the point where the grim Malthusian forces - famine, disease and war - will begin to act. Today, as the population of humans and the size of the global economy rapidly approach absolute limits set by the carrying capacity of the earth’s environment, it is important to listen to the warning voice of Malthus.

Contents

1.  The education of Malthus
2.  Debate on the views of Godwin and Condorcet
3.  Publication of the first essay in 1798
4.  The second essay, published in 1803
5.  Systems of equality
6.  The Poor Laws
7.  Replies to Malthus
8.  Ricardo’s Iron Law of Wages; the Corn Laws
9.  Acceptance of birth control in England
10. The Irish Potato Famine of 1845
11. The impact of Malthus on biology
12. The importance of Malthus today
13. Limits to the carrying capacity of the global environment
14. Conclusion

1. The education of Malthus

T.R. Malthus’ Essay on The Principle of Population, the first edition of which was published in 1798, was one of the the first systematic studies of the problem of population in relation to resources. Earlier discussions of the problem had been published by Boterro in Italy, Robert Wallace in England, and Benjamin Franklin in America. However Malthus’ Essay was the first to stress the fact that, in general, powerful checks operate continuously to keep human populations from increasing beyond their available food supply. In a later edition, published in 1803, he buttressed this assertion with carefully collected demographic and sociological data from many societies at various periods of their histories.

The publication of Malthus’ Essay coincided with a wave of disillusionment which followed the optimism of the Enlightenment. The utopian societies predicted by the philosophers of the Enlightenment were compared with reign of terror in Robespierre’s France and with the miseries of industrial workers in England; and the discrepancy required an explanation. The optimism which preceded the French Revolution, and the disappointment which followed a few years later, closely paralleled the optimistic expectations of our own century, in the period after the Second World War, when it was thought that the transfer of technology to the less developed parts of the world would eliminate poverty, and the subsequent disappointment when poverty persisted. Science and technology developed rapidly in the second half of the twentieth century, but the benefits which they conferred were just as rapidly consumed by a global population which today is increasing at the rate of one billion people every fourteen years. Because of the close parallel between the optimism and disappointments of Malthus’ time and those of our own, much light can be thrown on our present situation by rereading the debate between Malthus and his contemporaries.

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) came from an intellectual family: His father, Daniel Malthus, was a moderately well-to-do English country gentleman, an enthusiastic believer in the optimistic ideas of the Enlightenment, and a friend of the philosophers Henry Rousseau, David Hume and William Godwin. The famous book on population by the younger Malthus grew out of conversations with his father.

Daniel Malthus attended Oxford, but left without obtaining a degree. He later built a country home near Dorking, which he called “The Rookery”. The house had Gothic battlements, and he land belonging to it contained a beech forest, an ice house, a corn mill, a large lake, and serpentine walks leading to “several romantic buildings with appropriate dedications”. Daniel Malthus was an ardent admirer of Rousseau; and when the French philosopher visited England with his mistress, Th´er`ese le Vasseur, Danial Malthus entertained him at the Rookery. Rousseau and Th´er`ese undoubtedly saw Daniel’s baby son (who was always called Robert or Bob) and they must have noticed with pity that he had been born with a hare lip. This was later sutured, and apart from a slight scar which marked the operation, he became very handsome.

Robert Malthus was at first tutored at home; but in 1782, when he was 16 years old, he was sent to study at the famous Dissenting Academy at Warrington in Lancashire. Joseph Priestly had taught at Warrington, and he had completed his famous History of Electricity there, as well as his Essay on Government, which contains the phrase “the greatest good for the greatest number”.

Robert’s tutor at Warrington Academy was Gilbert Wakefield (who was later imprisoned for his radical ideas). When Robert was 18, Wakefield arranged for him to be admitted to Jesus College, Cambridge University, as a student of mathematics. Robert Malthus graduated from Cambridge in 1788 with a first-class degree in mathematics. He was Ninth Wrangler, which meant that he was the ninth-best mathematician in his graduating class. He also won prizes in declamation, both in English and in Latin, which is surprising in view of the speech defect from which he suered all his life.

2. Debate on the views of Godwin and Condorcet

In 1793, Robert Malthus was elected a fellow of Jesus College, and he also took orders in the Anglican Church. He was assigned as Curate to Okewood Chapel in Surrey. This small chapel stood in a woodland region, and Malthus’ illiterate parishoners were so poor that the women and children went without shoes. They lived in low thatched huts made of woven branches plastered with mud. The floors of these huts were of dirt, and the only light came from tiny window openings. Malthus’ parishioners diet consisted almost entirely of bread. The children of these cottagers developed late, and were stunted in growth. Nevertheless, in spite of the harsh conditions of his parishoners’ lives, Malthus noticed that the number of births which he recorded in the parish register greatly exceeded the number of deaths. It was probably this fact which first turned his attention to the problem of population.

By this time, Daniel Malthus had sold the Rookery; and after a period of travel, he had settled with his family at Albury, about nine miles from Okewood Chapel. Robert Malthus lived with his parents at Albury, and it was here that the famous debates between father and son took place. 1793, the year when RobertMalthus took up his position at Okewood, was also the year in which Danial Malthus friend, William Godwin, published his enormously optimistic book, Political Justice [6,14,21]. In this book, Godwin predicted a future society where scientific progress would liberate humans from material want. Godwin predicted that in the future, with the institution of war abolished, with a more equal distribution of property, and with the help of scientific improvements in agriculture and industry, much less labour would be needed to support life. Luxuries are at present used to maintain artificial distinctions between the classes of society, Godwin wrote, but in the future values will change; humans will live more simply, and their eorts will be devoted to self-fulfillment and to intellectual and moral improvement, rather than to material possessions. With the help of automated agriculture, the citizens of a future society will need only a few hours a day to earn their bread.

Godwin went on to say, “The spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility and the spirit of fraud - these are the immediate growth of the established administration of property. They are alike hostile to intellectual improvement.

The other vices of envy , malice, and revenge are their inseparable companions. In a state of society where men lived in the midst of plenty, and where all shared alike the bounties of nature, these sentiments would inevitably expire. The narrow principle of selfishness would vanish. No man being obliged to guard his little store, or provide with anxiety and pain for his restless wants, each would lose his own individual existence in the thought of the general good. No man would be the enemy of his neighbor, for they would have nothing to contend; and of consequence philanthropy would resume the empire which reason assigns her. Mind would be delivered from her perpetual anxiety about corporal support, and free to expatiate in the field of thought which is congenial to her. Each man would assist the inquiries of all.”

Godwin insisted that there is an indissoluble link between politics, ethics and knowledge. Political Justice is an enthusiastic vision of what humans could be like at some future period when the trend towards moral and intellectual improvement has lifted men and women above their their present state of ignorance and vice. Much of the savage structure of the penal system would then be unnecessary, Godwin believed. (At the time when he was writing, there were more than a hundred capital oenses in England, and this number had soon increased to almost two hundred. The theft of any object of greater value than ten shillings was punishable by hanging.) In its present state, Godwin wrote, society decrees that the majority of its citizens “should be kept in abject penury, rendered stupid with ignorance and disgustful with vice, perpetuated in nakedness and hunger, goaded to the commission of crimes, and made victims to the merciless laws which the rich have instituted to oppress them”. But human behavior is produced by environment and education, Godwin pointed out. If the conditions of upbringing were improved, behavior would also improve. In fact, Godwin believed that men and women are subject to natural laws no less than the planets of Newton’s solar system. “In the life of every human”, Godwin wrote, “there is a chain of causes, generated in that eternity which preceded his birth, and going on in regular procession through the whole period of his existence, in consequence of which it was impossible for him to act in any instance otherwise than he has acted.”

The chain of causality in human aairs implies that vice and crime should be regarded with the same attitude with which we regard disease. The causes of poverty, ignorance, vice and crime should be removed. Human failings should be cured rather than punished. With this in mind, Godwin wrote, “our disapprobation of vice will be of the same nature as our disapprobation of an infectious distemper.”

In France the Marquis de Condorcet had written an equally optimistic book, Esquisse d’un Tableau Historique des Progrès de l’Esprit Humain. Condorcet’s optimism was unaected even by the fact that at the time when he was writing he was in hiding, under sentence of death by Robesspierre’s government. Besides enthusiastically extolling Godwin’s ideas to his son, Daniel Malthus also told him of the views of Condorcet.

Condorcet’s Esquisse, is an enthusiastic endorsement of the idea of infinite human perfectability which was current among the philosophers of the 18th century, and in this book, Condorcet anticipated many of the evolutionary ideas of Charles Darwin. He compared humans with animals, and found many common traits. Condorcet believed that animals are able to think, and even to think rationally, although their thoughts are extremely simple compared with those of humans. He also asserted that humans historically began their existence on the same level as animals and gradually developed to their present state. Since this evolution took place historically, he reasoned, it is probable, or even inevitable, that a similar evolution in the future will bring mankind to a level of physical, mental and moral development which will be as superior to our own present state as we are now superior to animals. In his Esquisse, Condorcet called attention to the unusually long period of dependency which characterizes the growth and education of human o- spring. This prolonged childhood is unique among living beings. It is needed for the high level of mental development of the human species; but it requires a stable family structure to protect the young during their long upbringing.

Thus, according to Condorcet, biological evolution brought into existence a moral precept, the sanctity of the family.

Similarly, Condorcet maintained, larger associations of humans would have been impossible without some degree of altruism and sensitivity to the suering of others incorporated into human behavior, either as instincts or as moral precepts or both; and thus the evolution of organized society entailed the development of sensibility and morality.

Condorcet believed that ignorance and error are responsible for vice; and he listeded what he regarded as the main mistakes of civilization: hereditary transmission of power, inequality between men and women, religious bigotry, disease, war, slavery, economic inequality, and the division of humanity into mutually exclusive linguistic groups.

Condorcet believed the hereditary transmission of power to be the source of much of the tyranny under which humans suer; and he looked forward to an era when republican governments would be established throughout the world. Turning to the inequality between men and women, Condorcet wrote that he could see no moral, physical or intellectual basis for it. He called for complete social, legal, and educational equality between the sexes.

Condorcet predicted that the progress of medical science would free humans from the worst ravages of disease. Furthermore, he maintained that since perfectibility (i.e. evolution) operates throughout the biological world, there is no reason why mankind’s physical structure might not gradually improve, with the result that human life in the remote future could be greatly prolonged. Condorcet believed that the intellectual and moral facilities of man are capable of continuous and steady improvement; and he thought that one of the most important results of this improvement will be the abolition of war.

As Daniel Malthus talked warmly about Godwin, Condorcet, and the idea of human progress, the mind of his son, Robert, turned to the unbalance between births and deaths which he had noticed among his parishoners at Okewood Chapel. He pointed out to his father that no matter what benefits science might be able to confer, they would soon be eaten up by population growth. Regardless of technical progress, the condition of the lowest social class would remain exactly the same: The poor would continue to live, as they always had, on the exact borderline between survival and famine, clinging desperately to the lower edge of existence. For them, change for the worse was impossible since it would loosen their precarious hold on life; their children would die and their numbers would diminish until they balanced the supply of food. But any change for the better was equally impossible, because if more nourishment should become available, more of the children of the poor would survive, and the share of food for each of them would again be reduced to the precise minimum required for life.

Observation of his parishioners at Okewood had convinced RobertMalthus that this sombre picture was a realistic description of the condition of the poor in England at the end of the 18th century. Techniques of agriculture and industry were indeed improving rapidly; but among the very poor, population was increasing equally fast, and the misery of society’s lowest class remained unaltered.

Daniel Malthus was so impressed with his son’s arguments that he urged him to develop them into a small book. Robert Malthus’ first essay on population, written in response to his father’s urging, was only 50,000 words in length. It was was published anonymously in 1798, and its full title was An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it aects the future improvement of society, with remarks on the speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other writers. Robert Malthus’ Essay explored the consequences of his basic thesis: that “the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man”.

3. Publication of the first essay in 1798

“That population cannot increase without the means of subsistence”, Robert Malthus wrote, “is a proposition so evident that it needs no illustration. That population does invariably increase, where there are means of subsistence, the history of every people who have ever existed will abundantly prove. And that the superior power cannot be checked without producing misery and vice, the ample portion of these two 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.”

In order to illustrate the power of human populations to grow quickly to enormous numbers if left completely unchecked, Malthus turned to statistics from the United States, where the population had doubled every 25 years for a century and a half. Malthus called this type of growth “geometrical” (today we would call it “exponential”); and, drawing on his mathematical education, he illustrated it by the progression 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,..etc. In order to show that, in the long run, no improvement in agriculture could possibly keep pace with unchecked population growth, Malthus allowed that, in England, agricultural output might with great eort be doubled during the next quarter century; but during a subsequent 25-year period it could not again be doubled. The growth of agricultural output could at the very most follow an arithmetic (linear) progression, 1,2,3,4,5,6,...etc.

Because of the overpoweringly greater numbers which can potentially be generated by exponential population growth, as contrasted to the slow linear progression of sustenance, Malthus was convinced that at almost all stages of human history, population has not expanded freely, but has instead pressed painfully against the limits of its food supply. He maintained that human numbers are normally held in check either by “vice or misery”. (Malthus classified both war and birth control as a forms of vice.) Occasionally the food supply increases through some improvement in agriculture, or through the opening of new lands; but population then grows very rapidly, and soon a new equilibrium is established, with misery and vice once more holding the population in check.

Like Godwin’s Political Justice, Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population was published at exactly the right moment to capture the prevailing mood of England. In 1793, the mood had been optimistic; but by 1798, hopes for reform had been replaced by reaction and pessimism. Public opinion had been changed by Robespierre’s Reign of Terror and by the threat of a French invasion. Malthus’ clear and powerfully written essay caught the attention of readers not only because it appeared at the right moment, but also because his two contrasting mathematical laws of growth were so striking.

One of Malthus’ readers was William Godwin, who recognized the essay as the strongest challenge to his utopian ideas that had yet been published. Godwin several times invited Malthus to breakfast at his home to discuss social and economic problems. (After some years, however, the friendship between Godwin and Malthus cooled, the debate between them having become more acrimonious.)

In 1801, Godwin published a reply to his critics, among them his former friends James Mackintosh and Samuel Parr, by whom he recently had been attacked. His Reply to Parr also contained a reply to Malthus: Godwin granted that the problem of overpopulation raised by Malthus was an extremely serious one. However, Godwin wrote, all that is needed to solve the problem is a change of the attitudes of society. For example we need to abandon the belief “that it is the first duty of princes to watch for (i.e. encourage) the multiplication of their subjects, and that a man or woman who passes the term of life in a condition of celibacy is to be considered as having failed to discharge the principal obligations owed to the community”. “On the contrary”, Godwin continued, “it now appears to be rather the man who rears a numerous family that has to some degree transgressed the consideration he owes to the public welfare”. Godwin suggested that each marriage should be allowed only two or three children or whatever number might be needed to balance the current rates of mortality and celibacy. This duty to society, Godwin wrote, would surely not be too great a hardship to be endured, once the reasons for it were thoroughly understood.

4. The second essay, published in 1803

Malthus’ small essay had captured public attention in England, and he was anxious to expand it with empirical data which would show his principle of population to be valid not only in England in his own day, but in all societies and all periods. He therefore traveled widely, collecting data. He also made use of the books of explorers, such as Cook and Vancouver.

Malthus second edition - more than three times the length of his original essay on population - was ready in 1803. Book I and Book II of the 1803 edition of Malthus’ Essay are devoted to a study of the checks to population growth which have operated throughout history in all the countries of the world for which he possessed facts.

In his first chapter, Malthus stressed the potentially enormous power of population growth contrasted the slow growth of the food supply. He concluded that strong checks to the increase of population must almost always be operating to keep human numbers within the bounds of sustenance. He classified the checks as either preventive or positive, the preventive checks being those which reduce fertility, while the positive checks are those which increase mortality. Among the positive checks, Malthus listed “unwholesome occupations, severe labour and exposure to the seasons, extreme poverty, bad nursing of children, great towns, excesses of all kinds, the whole train of common diseases and epidemics, wars, plague, and famine”.

In the following chapters of Books I, Malthus showed in detail the mechanisms by which population is held at the level of sustenance in various cultures. He first discussed primitive hunter-gatherer societies, such as the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, Van Diemens Land and New Holland, and those tribes of North American Indians living predominantly by hunting. In hunting societies, he pointed out, the population is inevitably very sparse: “The great extent of territory required for the support of the hunter has been repeatedly stated and acknowledged”, Malthus wrote, “...The tribes of hunters, like beasts of prey, whom they resemble in their mode of subsistence, will consequently be thinly scattered over the surface of the earth.

Like beasts of prey, they must either drive away or fly from every rival, and be engaged in perpetual contests with each other...The neighboring nations live in a perpetual state of hostility with each other. The very act of increasing in one tribe must be an act of aggression against its neighbors, as a larger range of territory will be necessary to support its increased numbers.

The contest will in this case continue, either till the equilibrium is restored by mutual losses, or till the weaker party is exterminated or driven from its country... Their object in battle is not conquest but destruction. The life of the victor depends on the death of the enemy”. Malthus concluded that mong the American Indians of his time, war was the predominant check to population growth, although famine, disease and infanticide each played a part.

In the next chapter, Malthus quoted Captain Cook’s description of the natives of the region near Queen Charlotte’s Sound in New Zealand, whose way of life involved perpetual war. “If I had followed the advice of all our pretended friends”, Cook wrote, “I might have exterpated the whole race; for the people of each hamlet or village, by turns, applied to me to destroy the other”. According to Cook, the New Zealanders practiced both ceaseless war and cannibalism; and population pressure provided a motive for both practices.

In later chapters on nomadic societies of the Near East and Asia, war again appears, not only as a consequence of the growth of human numbers, but also as one of the major mechanisms by which these numbers are reduced to the level of their food supply. The studies quoted by Malthus make it seem likely that the nomadic Tartar tribes of central Asia made no use of the preventive checks to population growth. In fact the Tartar tribes may have regarded growth of their own populations as useful in their wars with neighboring tribes.

Malthus also described the Germanic tribes of Northern Europe, whose population growth led them to the attacks which destroyed the Roman Empire.

He quoted the following passage from Machiavelli’s History of Florence: “The people who inhabit the northern parts that lie between the Rhine and the Danube, living in a healthful and prolific climate, often increase to such a degree that vast numbers of them are forced to leave their native country and go in search of new habitations. When any of those provinces begins to grow too populous and wants to disburden itself, the following method is observed. In the first place, it is divided into three parts, in each of which there is an equal portion of the nobility and commonality, the rich and the poor. After this they cast lots; and that division on which the lot falls quits the country and goes to seek its fortune, leaving the other two more room and liberty to enjoy their possessions at home. These emigrations proved the destruction of the Roman Empire”. Regarding the Scandinavians in the early middle ages, Malthus wrote: “Mallet relates, what is probably true, that it was their common custom to hold an assembly every spring for the purpose of considering in what quarter they should make war”.

In many of the societies which Malthus described, a causal link can be seen, not only between population pressure and poverty, but also between population pressure and war. As one reads his Essay, it becomes clear why both these terrible sources of human anguish saturate so much of history, and why eorts to eradicate them have so often met with failure: The only possible way to eliminate poverty and war is to reduce the pressure of population by preventive checks, since the increased food supply produced by occasional cultural advances can give only very temporary relief.

In Book II, Malthus turned to the nations of Europe, as they appeared at the end of the 18th century, and here he presents us with a dierent picture. Although in these societies poverty, unsanitary housing, child labour, malnutrition and disease all took a heavy toll, war produced far less mortality than in hunting and pastoral societies, and the preventive checks, which lower fertility, played a much larger roll.

Malthus had visited Scandinavia during the summer of 1799, and he had made particularly detailed notes on Norway. He was thus able to present a description of Norwegian economics and demography based on his own studies. Norway was remarkable for having the lowest reliably-recorded death rate of any nation at that time: Only 1 person in 48 died each year in Norway. (By comparison, 1 person in 20 died each year in London.) The rate of marriage was also remarkably low, with only 1 marriage each year for every 130 inhabitants; and thus in spite of the low death rate, Norway’s population had increased only slightly from the 723,141 inhabitants recorded in 1769.

There were two reasons for late marriage in Norway: Firstly, every man born of a farmer or a labourer was compelled by law to be a soldier in the reserve army for a period of ten years; and during his military service, he could not marry without the permission of both his commanding ocer and the parish priest. These permissions were granted only to those who were clearly in an economic position to support a family. Men could be inducted into the army at any age between 20 and 30, and since commanding ocers preferred older recruits, Norwegian men were often in their 40’s before they were free to marry. At the time when Malthus was writing, these rules had just been made less restrictive; but priests still refused to unite couples whose economic foundations they judged to be insucient.

The second reason for late marriages was the structure of the farming community. In general, Norwegian farms were large; and the owner’s household employed many young unmarried men and women as servants. These young people had no chance to marry unless a smaller house on the property became vacant, with its attached small parcel of land for the use of the “houseman”; but because of the low death rate, such vacancies were infrequent.

Thus Norway’s remarkably low death rate was balanced by a low birth rate. Other chapters in Book II are devoted to the checks to population growth in Sweden, Russia, Central Europe, Switzerland, France, England, Scotland and Ireland.

Malthus painted a very dark panorama of population pressure and its consequences in human societies throughout the world and throughout history: At the lowest stage of cultural development are the hunter-gatherer societies, where the density of population is extremely low. Nevertheless, the area required to support the hunters is so enormous that even their sparse and thinly scattered numbers press hard against the limits of sustenance. The resulting competition for territory produces merciless intertribal wars.

The domestication of animals makes higher population densities possible; and wherever this new mode of food production is adopted, human numbers rapidly increase; but very soon a new equilibrium is established, with the population of pastoral societies once more pressing painfully against the lim- its of the food supply, growing a little in good years, and being cut back in bad years by famine, disease and war.

Finally, agricultural societies can maintain extremely high densities of population; but the time required to achieve a new equilibrium is very short. After a brief period of unrestricted growth, human numbers are once more crushed against the barrier of limited resources; and if excess lives are produced by overbreeding, they are soon extinguished by deaths among the children of the poor.

Malthus was conscious that he had drawn an extremely dark picture of the human condition. He excused himself by saying that he has not done it gratuitously, but because he was convinced that the dark shades really are there, and that they form an important part of the picture. He did allow one ray of light, however: By 1803, his own studies of Norway, together with personal conversations with Godwin and the arguments in Godwin’s Reply to Parr, had convinced Malthus that “moral restraint” should be included among the possible checks to population growth. Thus he concluded Book II of his 1803 edition by saying that the checks which keep population down to the level of the means of subsistence can all be classified under the headings of “moral restraint, vice and misery”. (In his first edition he had maintained that vice and misery are the only possibilities).

5. Systems of Equality

In the 1803 edition ofMalthus’ Essay, Books III and IV form a second volume.

The ideas which he put forward in this second volume are much more open to dispute than are the solidly empirical demographic studies of Books I and II. Malthus excused himself at the beginning of the second volume, saying that he realized that the ideas which he was about to put forward were less solidly based than those in his first volume. However, he said that he wished to explore all the consequences of his principle of population: “..Even the errors into which I may have fallen”, he wrote, “by aording a handle to argument, and an additional excitement to examination, may be subservient to the important end of bringing a subject so nearly connected with the happiness of society into more general notice”.

Malthus began Book III by discussing the systems of equality proposed by Condorcet and Godwin; and he tried to show that such utopian societies would prove impossible in practice, because they would rapidly drown in a flood of excess population. Condorcet himself had recognized this diculty. He realized that improved living conditions for the poor would lead to a rapid growth of population. “Must not a period then arrive”, Condorcet had written, “... when the increase of the number of men surpassing their means of subsistence, the necessary result must be either a continual diminution of happiness and population... or at least a kind of oscillation between good and evil?”

Condorcet believed the serious consequences of population pressure to be far in the future, but Malthus disagreed with him on exactly that point: “M. Condorcet’s picture of what may be expected to happen when the number of men shall surpass subsistence is justly drawn... The only point in which I dier from M. Condorcet in this description is with regard to the period when it may be applied to the human race... This constantly subsisting cause of periodical misery has existed in most countries ever since we have had any histories of mankind, and continues to exist at the present moment.” “M. Condorcet, however, goes on to say”, Malthus continued, “that should the period, which he conceives to be so distant, ever arrive, the human race, and the advocates of the perfectability of man, need not be alarmed at it. He then proceeds to remove the diculty in a manner which I profess not to understand. Having observed that the ridiculous prejudices of superstition would by that time have ceased to throw over morals a corrupt and degrading austerity, he alludes either to a promiscuous concubinage, which would prevent breeding, or to something else as unnatural. To remove the diculty in this way will surely, in the opinion of most men, be to destroy that virtue and purity of manners which the advocates of equality and of the perfectibility of man profess to be the end and object of their views.” When

Malthus referred to “something else as unnatural”, he of course meant birth control, some forms of which existed at the time when he was writing; and in this passage we see that he was opposed to the practice. He preferred late marriage or “moral restraint” as a means of limiting excessive population growth.

After his arguments against Condorcet, Malthus discussed William Godwin’s egalitarian utopia, which, he said, would be extremely attractive if only it could be achieved: “The system of equality which Mr. Godwin proposes”, Malthus wrote, “is, on the first view of it, the most beautiful and engaging which has yet appeared. A melioration of society to be produced merely by reason and conviction gives more promise of permanence than than any change eected and maintained by force. The unlimited exercise of private judgement is a doctrine grand and captivating, and has a vast superiority over those systems where every individual is in a manner the slave of the public.

The substitution of benevolence, as a master-spring and moving principle of society, instead of self-love, appears at first sight to be a consummation devoutly to be wished. In short, it is impossible to contemplate the whole of this fair picture without emotions of delight and admiration, accompanied with an ardent longing for the period of its accomplishment.”

“But alas!” Malthus continued, “That moment can never arrive.... The great error under which Mr. Godwin labours throughout his whole work is the attributing of almost all the vices and misery that prevail in civil society to human institutions. Political regulations and the established administration of property are, with him, the fruitful sources of all evil, the hotbeds of all the crimes that degrade mankind. Were this really a true state of the case, it would not seem a completely hopeless task to remove evil completely from the world; and reason seems to be the proper and adequate instrument for eecting so great a purpose. But the truth is, that though human institutions appear to be, and indeed often are, the obvious and obtrusive causes of much misery in society, they are, in reality, light and superficial in comparison with those deeper-seated causes of evil which result from the laws of nature and the passions of mankind.”

The passions of mankind drive humans to reproduce, while the laws of nature set limits to the carrying capacity of the environment. Godwin’s utopia, if established, would be very favorable to the growth of population; and very soon the shortage of food would lead to its downfall: Because of the overpowering force of population growth, “Man cannot live in the midst of plenty. All cannot share alike the bounties of nature. Were there no established administration of property, every man would be obliged to guard with his force his little store. Selfishness would be triumphant. The subjects of contention would be perpetual. Every individual would be under constant anxiety about corporal support, and not a single intellect would be left free to expatiate in the field of thought.”

Malthus believed that all systems of equality are doomed to failure, not only because of the powerful pressure of population growth, but also because dierences between the upper, middle, and lower classes serve the useful purpose of providing humans with an incentive for hard work. He thought that fear of falling to a lower social status, and hope of rising to a higher one, provide a strong incentive for constructive activity. However, he believed that happiness is most often found in the middle ranks of society, and that therefore the highest and lowest classes ought not to be large. Malthus advocated universal education and security of property as means by which the lowest classes of society could be induced to adopt more virtuous and prudent patterns of behavior.

6. The Poor Laws

Among the most controversial chapters of Malthus’ second volume are those dealing with the Poor Laws. During the reign of Queen Elisabeth I, a law had been enacted according to which justices were authorized to collect taxes in order to set to work “...the children of all such, whose parents shall not by the said persons be thought able to keep and maintain their children; and also such persons, married or unmarried, as, having no means to maintain them, use no ordinary or daily trade to get their living by..”. Malthus commented:

“What is this but saying that the funds for the maintenance of labour in this country may be increased without limit by a fiat of government...? Strictly speaking, this clause is as arrogant and absurd as if it had enacted that two ears of wheat should in the future grow where one had grown before. Canute, when he commanded the waves not to wet his princely foot, did not assume a greater power over the laws of nature.” Malthus pointed out that if we believe that every person has a right to have as many children as he or she wishes, and if we enact a law, according to which every person born has a right to sustenance, then we implicitly assume that the supply of food can be increased without limit, which of course is impossible.

During the first few years of the nineteenth century there was a severe shortage of food in England, partly because of war with France, and partly because of harvest failures. As a result, the price of wheat tripled, causing great distress among the poor. By 1803, 3,000,000 pounds sterling were being distributed to make up the dierence between the wages of poor workers and the amount which they needed to pay for food. Malthus regarded the supply of grain as constant, i.e. independent of the price; and he therefore believed that distribution of money under the Poor Laws merely raised the price of grain still further in relation to wages, forcing a larger number of independent workers to seek help. He thought that the distributed money helped to relieve suering in some cases, but that it spread the suering over a wider area.

In some parishes, the amount of money distributed under the Poor Laws was proportional to the number the number of children in a family, and Malthus believed that this encouraged the growth of population, further aggravating the shortage of food. “A poor man may marry with little or no prospect of being able to support a family in independence”, he wrote, “...and the Poor Laws may be said therefore in some measure to create the poor which they maintain; and as the provisions of the country must, in consequence of the increased population, be distributed to every man in smaller proportions, it is evident that the labour of those who are not supported by parish assistance, will purchase a smaller quantity of provisions than before, and consequently more of them must be driven to ask for support.” Malthus advocated a very gradual abolition of the Poor Laws, and he believed that while this change was being brought about, the laws ought to be administered in such a way that the position of least well-o independent workers should not be worse than the position of those supported by parish assistance.

7. Replies to Malthus

The second edition of Malthus’ Essay was published in 1803. It provoked a storm of controversy, and a flood of rebutals. In 1803 England’s political situation was sensitive. Revolutions had recently occurred both in America and in France; and in England there was much agitation for radical change, against which Malthus provided counter-arguments. Pitt and his government had taken Malthus’ first edition seriously, and had abandoned their plans for extending the Poor Laws. Also, as a consequence of Malthus’ ideas, England’s first census was taken in 1801. This census, and subsequent ones, taken in 1811, 1821 and 1831, showed that England’s population was indeed increasing rapidly, just as Malthus had feared. (The population of England and Wales more than doubled in 80 years, from an estimated 6.6 million in 1750 to almost 14 million in 1831.) In 1803, the issues of poverty and population were at the center of the political arena, and articles refuting Malthus began to stream from the pens of England’s authors.

William Coleridge planned to write an article against Malthus, and he made extensive notes in the margins of his copy of the Essay. In one place he wrote: “Are Lust and Hunger both alike Passions of physical Necessity, and the one equally with the other independent of the Reason and the Will? Shame upon our race that there lives an individual who dares to ask the Question.” In another place Coleridge wrote: “Vice and Virtue subsist in the agreement of the habits of a man with his Reason and Conscience, and these can have but one moral guide, Utility, or the virtue and Happiness of Rational Beings”. Although Coleridge never wrote his planned article, his close friend Robert Southy did so, using Coleridge’s notes almost verbatum. Some years later Coleridge remarked: “Is it not lamentable - is it not even marvelous - that the monstrous practical sophism of Malthus should now have gained complete possession of the leading men of the kingdom! Such an essential lie in morals - such a practical lie in fact it is too! I solemnly declare that I do not believe that all the heresies and sects and factions which ignorance and the weakness and wickedness of man have ever given birth to, were altogether so disgraceful to man as a Christian, a philosopher, a statesman or citizen, as this abominable tenet.”

In 1812, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was later to become William Godwin’s son-in-law, wrote: “Many well-meaning persons... would tell me not to make people happy for fear of over-stocking the world... War, vice and misery are undoubtedly bad; they embrace all that we can conceive of temporal and eternal evil. Are we to be told that these are remedyless, because the earth would in case of their remedy, be overstocked?” A year later, Shelley called Malthus a “priest, eunuch, and tyrant”, and accused him, in a pamphlet, of proposing that “.. after the poor have been stript naked by the taxgatherer and reduced to bread and tea and fourteen hours of hard labour by their masters.. the last tie by which Nature holds them to benignant earth (whose plenty is garnered up in the strongholds of their tyrants) is to be divided... They are required to abstain from marrying under penalty of starvation... whilst the rich are permitted to add as many mouths to consume the products of the poor as they please”

Godwin himself wrote a long book (which was published in 1820) entitled Of Population, An Enquery Concerning the Power and Increase in the Number of Mankind, being an answer to Mr. Malthus. One can also view many of the books of Charles Dickens as protests against Malthus’ point of view. For example, Oliver Twist gives us a picture of a workhouse “administered in such a way that the position of least well-o independent workers should not be worse than the position of those supported by parish assistance.”

Among the authors defending Malthus was Harriet Martineau, who wrote: “The desire of his heart and the aim of his work were that domestic virtue and happiness should be placed within the reach of all... He found that a portion of the people were underfed, and that one consequence of this was a fearful mortality among infants; and another consequence the growth of a recklessness among the destitute which caused infanticide, corruption of morals, and at best, marriage between pauper boys and girls; while multitudes of respectable men and women, who paid rates instead of consuming them, were unmarried at forty or never married at all. Prudence as to time of marriage and for making due provision for it was, one would think, a harmless recommendation enough, under the circumstances.”

8. Ricardo’s Iron Law of Wages; the Corn Laws

Malthus continued a life of quiet scholarship, unperturbed by the heated public debate which he had caused. At the age of 38, he married a second cousin. The marriage produced only three children, which at that time was considered to be a very small number. Thus he practiced the pattern of late marriage which he advocated. Although he was appointed rector of a church in Lincolnshire, he never preached there, hiring a curate to do this in his place. Instead of preaching, Malthus accepted an appointment as Professor of History and Political Economy at the East India Company’s College at Haileybury. This appointment made him the first professor of economics in England, and probably also the first in the world. Among the important books which he wrote while he held this post was Principles of Political Economy, Considered with a View to their Practical Application. Malthus also published numerous revised and expanded editions of his Essay on the Principle of Population. The third edition was published in 1806, the fourth in 1807, the fifth in 1817, and the sixth in 1826.

Malthus became a close friend of the wealthy financier and economic theorist, David Ricardo (1772-1823). He and Ricardo met frequently to discuss economic problems, and when circumstances prevented them from meeting, they exchanged endless letters. Ricardo and Malthus diered on the subject of the Corn Laws, but they never allowed this dierence of opinion to aect their friendship.

Although shortages of food had produced drastic increases in the price of grain, the import of cheap foreign grain was eectively prevented by the Corn Laws. These laws had been introduced by the large landowners, who controlled Parliament, but they were opposed by the manufacturers, who wished to make less expensive food available to their workers. On this issue,

Malthus sided with the landowners, arguing that if England became dependent on imports of foreign grain, the country would be insecure: What if England’s ability to export manufactured goods in exchange for the grain should later be undermined by foreign competition? Malthus pointed out that the country would then face starvation. Ricardo, on the other hand, sided with the rising class of manufacturers. In 1832 the Reform Bill gave the manufacturers control of Parliament, the Corn Laws were repealed, and England’s rapidly-growing population became dependent on imports of foreign grain.

Ricardo acceptedMalthus’ principle of population, and from it he deduced what came to be called his “Iron Law of Wages”. According to Ricardo, labor is a commodity, and wages are determined by the law of supply and demand: When wages fall below the starvation level, the workers’ children die. Labor then becomes a scarce commodity, and wages rise. On the other hand, when wages rise above the starvation level, the working population multiplies rapidly, labor becomes a plentiful commodity, and wages fall again.

Thus, according to Ricardo, there is an Iron Law which holds wages at the minimum level at which life can be supported. The combined pessimism of Malthus and Ricardo caused Carlile to call economics “the dismal science”.

9. Acceptance of birth control in England

Ricardo’s model accurately described the condition of industrial workers at the time when he was living. However, this model did not take into account the possibility of trade unions and social legislation fixing the minimum wage; nor did Ricardo’s model take into account the possibility that workers would use birth control to limit their population growth.

We have seen that Malthus himself was opposed to birth control, advocating late marriage and “moral restraint” instead as the proper means for avoiding excessive population growth. However others in England, notably the Utilitarians, while accepting Malthus’ ideas concerning population pressure, advocated birth control as a means of relieving it. In 1821, the Utilitarian philosopher James Mill (the father of John Stuart Mill) wrote in his Elements of Political Economy: “The result to be aimed at is to secure to the great body of the people all the happiness which is capable of being derived from the matrimonial union, (while) preventing the evils which the too rapid increase of their numbers would entail. The progress of legislation, the improvement of the education of the people, and the decay of superstition will, in time, it may be hoped, accomplish the dicult task of reconciling these important objects.”

This somewhat vague advocacy of birth control was made much more explicit by the trade union leader Francis Place (1771-1854). In 1822 Place published, at considerable risk to himself, a pamphlet entitled To the Married of Both Sexes of the Working People. Place’s pamphlet contains the following passages:

“It is a great truth, often told and never denied, that when there are too many working people in any trade or manufacture, they are worse paid than they ought to be paid, and are compelled to work more hours than they ought to work. When the number of working people in any trade or manufacture has for some years been too great, wages are reduced very low, and the working people become little better than slaves.” “When wages have thus been reduced to a very small sum, working people can no longer maintain their children as all good and respectable people wish to maintain their children, but are compelled to neglect them; - to send them to dierent employments; - to Mills and Manufactories, at a very early age.

The miseries of these poor children cannot be described, and need not be described to you, who witness them and deplore them every day of your lives.”

“The sickness of yourselves and your children, the privation and pain and premature death of those you love but cannot cherish as you wish, need only be alluded to. You know all these evils too well.” “And what, you will ask, is the remedy? How are we to avoid these miseries? The answer is short and plain: the means are easy. Do as other people do, to avoid having more children than they wish to have, and can easily maintain.”

Place’s pamphlet then goes on to describe very explicitly the sponge method of contraception. “What is to be done is this. A piece of soft sponge is tied by a bobbin or penny ribbon, and inserted just before intercourse takes place. Many tie a sponge to each end of a ribbon, and they take care not to use the same sponge again until it has been washed. If the sponge be large enough, that is, as large as a green walnut, or a small apple, it will prevent conception.... without diminishing the pleasures of married life...” In 1832, Dr. Charles Knowlton, a Boston physician, published a book entitled

The Fruits of Philosophy, or the Private Companion of Young Married People. It reviewed the various methods of birth control then available, and it pointed out that in order to be reliable, the sponge method required the use of a saline douching solution. This small book was reprinted in England and sold for a number of years without ocial opposition. However, in 1876, the book was classified as obscene under a new law, and a bookseller was sentenced to two years in prison for selling it. The feminist leader, Annie Besant, and the liberal politician, Charles Bradlaugh, then provoked a new trial by selling the book themselves. They sent a polite letter to the magistrates announcing when and where they intended to sell Knowlton’s book, and asking to be arrested. The result was a a famous trial, at which the arguments of Malthus were quoted both by the judge and by the defense. The result of trial was inconclusive, however: Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh were acquitted, but Knowlton’s book was held to be obscene.

As the nineteenth century progressed, birth control gradually came to be accepted in England, and the average number of children per marriage fell from 6.16 in 1860 to 4.13 in 1890. By 1915 this figure had fallen to 2.43. Because of lowered population pressure, combined with the growth of trade unions and better social legislation, the condition of England’s industrial workers improved; and under the new conditions, Ricardo’s Iron Law of Wages fortunately no longer seemed to hold.

10. The Irish Potato Famine of 1845

Meanwhile, in Ireland, a dramatic series of events had occurred, confirming the ideas of Malthus. Anti-Catholic laws prevented the Irish cottagers from improving their social position; and instead they produced large families, fed almost exclusively on a diet of milk and potatos. The potato and milk diet allowed a higher density of population to be supported in Ireland than would have been the case if the Irish diet had consisted primarily of wheat. As a result, the population of Ireland grew rapidly: In 1695 it had been approximately one million, but by 1821 it had reached 6,801,827. By 1845, the population of Ireland was more than eight million; and in that year the potato harvest failed because of blight. All who were able to do so fled from the country, many emigrating to the United States; but two million people died of starvation. As the result of this shock, Irish marriage habits changed, and late marriage became the norm, just as Malthus would have wished. After the Potato Famine of 1845, Ireland maintained a stable population of roughly four million.

11. The impact of Malthus on biology

The impact of Malthus’ Essay was great, not only in demography and political economics, but also in biology. In 1836, Charles Darwin returned from his voyage on the Beagle with a mass of facts and ideas on species out of which he was struggling to construct a coherent picture; and Malthus gave him the clue he needed. “In October, 1838”, Darwin wrote later in his Autobiography, “that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry,

I happened to read for amusement ‘Malthus on Population’, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here then I had at last got a theory by which to work...”

Darwin wrote a sketch of his theory of evolution through natural selection; but he did not publish it, probably because he had a premonition of the furious opposition which his heretical ideas would provoke. In 1854 he returned to his work on species, but he was writing on a scale which would have developed into an enormous multi-volume work, whose completion might have taken the remainder of his life. Meanwhile, a young English biologist named Alfred Russell Wallace, working in the jungles of Malaysia, arrived at exactly the same theory as Darwin’s, and in exactly the same way - by reading Malthus! Wallace wrote a short paper describing his theory and sent it to Darwin, asking the older scientist’s opinion. Darwin was at first inclined to burn all his own work on the subject out of fairness to Wallace, but his friends persuaded him to instead write a short paper describing his views, which could be presented together with Wallace’s article. The two papers were read together to a meeting of the Linnean Society, which listened in stunned silence. Posterity has given both Darwin and Wallace credit for their joint discovery of the theory of evolution through natural selection.

12. The importance of Malthus today

Malthus died in Bath in 1834, but debate on his ideas continued to rage, both in his own century and our own. Each year he is refuted, and each year revived. Despite the impressive scientific progress, of our century, the frightful Malthusian forces - poverty, famine, disease, and war - cast as dark a shadow in our own times as they did in the nineteenth century. Indeed, the enormous power of modern weapons has greatly intensified the dangers posed by war; and the rapid growth of global population has given new dimensions to the problems of poverty and famine.

Looking at the world today, we can see regions where Malthus seems to be a truer prophet than Condorcet and Godwin. In most developing countries, poverty and disease are still major problems. In other parts of the world, the optimistic prophecies of Condorcet and Godwin have been at least partially fulfilled. In the industrialized nations, Godwin’s prophecy of automatized agriculture has certainly come true. In the nations of the North, only a small percentage of the population is engaged in agriculture, while most of the citizens are free to pursue other goals than food production. Scandinavia is an example of an area where poverty and war have both been eliminated locally, and where death from infectious disease is a rarity.

These achievements would have been impossible without the low birth rates which also characterize the region. In Scandinavia, and in other similar regions, low birth rates and death rates, a stable population, high educational levels, control of infectious disease, equal status for women, democratic governments, and elimination of poverty and war are linked together in a mutually re-enforcing circle of cause and eect. By contrast, in many large thirdworld cities, overcrowding, contaminated water, polluted air, dense population without adequate sanitation, low status of women, high birth rates, rapidly increasing population, high unemployment levels, poverty, crime, ethnic conflicts, and resurgence of infectious disease are also linked in a selfperpetuating causal loop - in this case a vicious circle.

Does the contrast between the regions of our contemporary world mean that Malthus has been “proved wrong” in some regions and “proved right” in others? To answer this question, let us re-examine the basic assertion which Malthus puts forward in Books I and II of the 1803 version of his Essay.

His basic thesis is that the maximum natural fertility of human populations is greatly in excess of replacement fertility. This being so, Malthus points out, human populations would always increase exponentially if they were not prevented from doing so by powerful and obvious checks. In general, Malthus tells us, populations cannot increase exponentially because the food supply increases slowly, or is constant. Therefore, he concludes, in most societies and almost all periods of history, checks to population growth are operating. These checks may be positive, or they may be preventive, the positive checks being those which raise the death rate, while the preventive checks lower the birth rate. There are, however, Malthus says, exceptional periods of history when the populations of certain societies do actually increase exponentially because of the opening of new lands or because of the introduction of new methods of food production. As an example, he cites the growth of the population of the United States, which doubled every 25 years over a period of 150 years.

We can see, from this review of Malthus’ basic thesis, that his demographic model is flexible enough to describe all of the regions of our contemporary world: If Malthus were living today, he would say that in countries with low birth and death rates and stable populations, the checks to population growth are primarily preventive, while in countries with high death rates, the positive checks are important. Finally, Malthus would describe our rapidly-growing global population as the natural result of the introduction of improved methods of food production in the developing countries. We should notice, however, that the flexibility of Malthus’ demographic model first appears in the 1803 version of his Essay: In the 1798 version, he maintained “..that population does invariably increase, where there are means of subsistence..” and “that the superior power (of population) cannot be checked without producing misery and vice..” This narrower model of population did not agree with Malthus’ own observations in Norway in 1799, and therefore in his 1803 Essay he allowed more scope for preventive checks, which included late marriage and moral restraint as well as birth control (which he classified under the heading of “vice”).

Today we are able to estimate the population of the world at various periods in history, and we can also make estimates of global population in prehistoric times. Looking at the data, we can see that the global population of humans has not followed an exponential curve as a function of time, but has instead followed a hyperbolic trajectory. At the time of Christ, the population of the world is believed to have been approximately 220 million.

By 1500, the earth contained 450 million people, and by 1750, the global population exceeded 700 million. As the industrial and scientific revolution has accelerated, global population has responded by increasing at a breakneck speed: In 1930, the population of the world reached two billion; in 1958 three billion; in 1974 four billion; in 1988 five billion, and in 1999, six billion.

Today, roughly a billion people are being added to the world’s population every fourteen years.

The simple mathematical curve which most nearly approximates the global population of humans as a function of time is an hyperbola of the form P=C/(2025-t). Here P is the population, t is the year, and C=190,000,000,000 is a constant. How are we to explain the fact that the population curve is not an exponential? We can turn to Malthus for an answer: According to his model, population does not increase exponentially, except under special circumstances, when the food supply is so ample that the increase of population is entirely unchecked. Malthus gives us instead a model of culturally-driven population growth. He tells us that population increase tends to press against the limits of the food supply, and since these limits are culturally determined, population density is also culturally-determined. Hunter-gatherer societies need large tracts of land for their support; and in such societies, the population density is necessarily low. Pastoral methods of food production can support populations of a higher density. Finally, extremely high densities of population can be supported by modern agriculture. Thus, the hyperbolic curve, P=C/(2025-t), should be seen as describing the rapidly-accelerating growth of human culture, this being understood to include methods of food production.

If we look at the curve, P=C/(2025-t), it is obvious that human culture has reached a period of crisis. The curve predicts that the world’s population will rise to infinity in the year 2025, which of course is impossible. Somehow the actual trajectory of global population as a function of time must deviate from the hyperbolic curve, and in fact, the trajectory has already begun to fall away slightly from the hyperbola. Because of the great amount of human suering which may be involved, and the potentially catastrophic damage to the earth’s environment, the question of how the actual trajectory of human population will come to deviate from the hyperbola is a matter of enormous importance. Will population overshoot the sustainable limit, and crash? Or will it gradually approach a maximum? In the case of the second alternative, will the checks which slow population growth be later marriage and family planning? Or will the grim Malthusian forces - famine, disease and war - act to hold the number of humans within their food supply?

13. Limits to the carrying capacity of the global environment

There are many indications that both the global population and the size if the global human economy are rapidly approaching absolute limits set by the carrying capacity of the earth’s environment. For example, a recent study by Vitousek, Ehrlich, Ehrlich and Matsen showed that 40 percent of the net primary product of landbased photosynthesis is appropriated, directly or indirectly, for human use. (The net primary product of photosynthesis is defined as the amount of solar energy converted to chemical energy by plants minus the energy used by the plants for their own metabolism). Thus, we are only a single doubling time away from 80 percent appropriation, which would certainly imply a disastrous degradation of the natural environment.

Another indication of our rapid approach to the absolute limit of environmental carrying capacity can be found in the present rate of loss of biodiversity. The total number of species of living organisms on the earth is thought be between 5 million and 30 million, of which only 1.4 million have been described. Between 50 percent and 90 percent of these species live in tropical forests, a habitat which is rapidly being destroyed because of pressures from exploding human populations. 55 percent of the earth’s tropical forests have already been cleared and burned; and an additional area four times the size of Switzerland is lost every year. Because of this loss of habitat, tropical species are now becoming extinct at a rate which is many thousands of times the normal background rate. If losses continue at the present rate, 20 percent of all tropical species will vanish irrevocably within the next 50 years. One hardly dares to think of what will happen after that.

Further evidence that the total size of the human economy has reached or exceeded the limits of sustainability comes from global warming, from the destruction of the ozone layer, from the rate of degradation and desertification of land, from statistics on rapidly vanishing non-renewable resources, and from recent famines.

In 1983, the Secretary-General of the United Nations established a World Commission on Environment and Development, led by Gro Harlem Brundtland, who was then Prime Minister of Norway. The Commission’s report, “Our Common Future”, examines the question of whether the earth can support a population of 10 billion people without the collapse of the ecological systems on which all life depends. With respect to food, the report has this to say:

“...Researchers have assessed the ‘theoretical’ potential for global food production. One study assumes that the area under food production can be around 1.5 billion hectares (3.7 billion acres - close to the present level), and that the average yields could go up to 5 tons of grain equivalent per hectare (as against the present average of 2 tons of grain equivalent). Allowing for production from rangelands and marine sources, the total ‘potential’ is placed at 8 billion tons of grain equivalent.”

“How many people can this sustain? The present global average consumption of plant energy for food, seed, and animal feed amounts to about 6,000 calories daily, with a range among countries of 3,000-15,000 calories, depending on the level of meat consumption. On this basis, the potential production could sustain a little more than 11 billion people. But if the average consumption rises substantially - say, to 9,000 calories - the population carrying capacity of the Earth comes down under 7.5 billion.”

“These figures could be substantially higher if the area under food production and the productivity of 3 billion hectares of permanent pasturage can be increased on a sustainable basis. Nevertheless, the data do suggest that meeting the food requirements of an ultimate world population of around 10 billion would require some changes in food habits, as well as greatly improving the eciency of traditional agriculture.”

Thus, the next doubling will bring the global population of humans near to or beyond the maximum number that the earth can support, even assuming greatly improved agricultural yields. The study quoted in the Brundtland report assumes that the world average for agricultural yields per hectare can be doubled; but this assumption raises many problems.

Extremely high-yield varieties of rice and wheat have indeed been produced by “Green Revolution” plant geneticists, such as Norman Borlaug. However, monocultures are vulnerable to plant diseases. Will the exclusive cultivation of high-yield plant varieties expose us to the risk of a repetition of the Irish Potato Famine on a much larger scale? High-yield crop varieties also require heavy use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, as well as large amounts of water. Will the enormous quantities of fertilizer and water required be available globally?

According to a recent study (Man’s Impact on the Global Environment, MIT Press, 1970), the world’s food production rose by 34 percent between 1951 and 1966; but this required a 146 percent increase in the use of nitrate fertilizers, and a 300 percent increase in the use of pesticides. Between 1964 and 1987, the fertilizer consumption of Asia increased by a factor of 10, from 4 million metric tons to 40 million metric tons. Much greater increases will be needed if global agriculture is to double its productivity per hectare during the next half century. Assuming the availability of the needed amounts of fertilizer, we can anticipate that the runo from fields, heavily saturated with nitrates and phosphates and pesticides, will contaminate the ground-water, lakes and oceans, thus reducing fish populations.

One can already observe a catastrophic depletion of oxygen in the bottom layers of such bodies of water as the Baltic Sea (which is surrounded by countries presently making heavy use of fertilizers in agriculture). This oxygen depletion is due to the growth of algae in layers near to the surface, stimulated by the presence of nitrates and phosphates. Bacterial decay of the algae at the bottom exhausts the oxygen; and in many parts of the Baltic, all bottom-living species have disappeared.

Pesticides and fertilizer in drinking water can cause a variety of human health problems, including cancer and methemoglobinemia. (Methemoglobinemia is sometimes called “blue baby syndrome”, and it results from drinking water containing too large a concentration of nitrates.)

If a global population of 10 billion is to be supported, another alternative is open: More land can be exploited for agriculture. However, we may encounter as many problems in doubling the area of the world’s agricultural land as in doubling its productivity per hectare.

The cost of roads, irrigation, clearance and fertilizer for new agricultural land averages more than a thousand U.S. dollars per hectare. During the next half century, hunger will strike the poorest parts of the world’s population. Capital for opening new agricultural land cannot come from those who are threatened by famine. It must be found in some other way.

A Report by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization makes the following statement concerning new agricultural lands: “In Southern Asia,...in some countries in Eastern Asia, in the Near East, and North Africa...there is almost no scope for expanding the agricultural area... In the dryer regions, it will even be necessary to return to permanent pasture the land which is marginal or submarginal for cultivation. In most of Latin

America and Africa south of the Sahara, there are still considerable possibilities for expanding cultivated areas; but the costs of development are high, and it will often be more economical to intensify the utilization of the areas already settled.”

In the 1950’s, both the USSR and Turkey attempted to convert arid grasslands into wheat farms. In both cases, the attempts were defeated by drought and wind erosion, just as the wheat farms of Oklahoma were overcome by drought and dust in the 1930’s.

If irrigation of arid lands is not performed with care, salt may be deposited, so that the land is ruined for agriculture. This type of desertification can be seen, for example, in some parts of Pakistan. Another type of desertification can be seen in the Sahel region of Africa, south of the Sahara.

Rapid population growth in the Sahel has led to overgrazing, destruction of trees, and wind erosion, so that the land has become unable to support even its original population. In the Sahel, and in many other regions of the world, scarcity of fresh water may become critical as populations increase, a fact which is indicated by quickly-falling water tables in many regions.

Added to the agricultural and environmental problems, are problems of finance and distribution. Famines can occur even when grain is available somewhere in the world, because those who are threatened with starvation may not be able to pay for the grain, or for its transportation. The economic laws of supply and demand are not able to solve this type of problem. One says that there is no “demand” for the food (meaning demand in the economic sense), even though people are in fact starving.

We can anticipate that as the earth’s human population approaches 10 billion, severe famines will occur in many developing countries. The beginnings of this tragedy can already be seen. It is estimated that roughly 40,000 children now die every day from starvation, or from a combination of disease and malnutrition.

An analysis of the global ratio of population to cropland shows that we may already have exceeded the sustainable limit of population through our dependence on petroleum: Between 1950 and 1982, the use of cheap synthetic fertilizers increased by a factor of 8. Much our present agricultural output depends their use, but their production is expensive in terms of energy. Furthermore, petroleum-derived synthetic fibers have reduced the amount of cropland needed for growing natural fibers, and petroleum-driven tractors have replaced draft animals which required cropland for pasturage. Also, petroleum fuels have replaced fuelwood and other fuels derived for biomass.

The reverse transition, from fossil fuels back to renewable energy sources, will require a considerable diversion of land from food production to energy production. For example, 1.1 hectares are needed to grow the sugarcane required for each alcohol-driven Brazilian automobile. This figure may be compared with the steadily falling average area of cropland available to each person in the world: .24 hectares in 1950, .16 hectares in 1982.

As population increases, the cropland per person will continue to fall, and we will be forced to make still heavier use of fertilizers to increase output per hectare. Also marginal land will be used in agriculture, with the probable result that much land will be degraded through erosion and salination. Reserves of oil are likely to be exhausted by the end of 21st century. Thus there is a danger that just as global population reaches the unprecedented level of 10 billion or more, the agricultural base for supporting it may suddenly collapse.

The resulting ecological catastrophe, possibly compounded by war and other disorders, could produce famine and death on a scale unprecedented in history - a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, involving billions rather than millions of people.

The resources of the earth and the techniques of modern science can support a global population of moderate size in comfort and security; but the optimum size is probably smaller than the world’s present population.

Given a suciently small global population, renewable sources of energy can be found to replace disappearing fossil fuels. Technology may also be able to find renewable substitutes for many disappearing mineral resources for a global population of a moderate size. What technology cannot do, however, is to give a global population of 10 billion people the standard of living which the industrialized countries enjoy today.

14. Conclusion

What would Malthus tell us if he were alive today? Undoubtedly he would say that we have reached a period of human history where it is vital to stabilize the world’s population if catastrophic environmental degradation and famine are to be avoided. He would applaud eorts to reduce suering by eliminating poverty, widespread disease, and war; but he would point out that, since it is necessary to stop the rapid increase of human numbers, it follows that whenever the positive checks to population growth are removed, it is absolutely necessary to replace them by preventive checks. Malthus’ point of view became more broad in the successive editions of his Essay; and if he were alive today, he might even agree that family planning is the most humane of the preventive checks.

In Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population, population pressure appears as one of the main causes of war; and Malthus also discusses many societies in which war is one of the the principle means by which population is reduced to the level of the food supply. Thus, his Essay contains another important message for our own times: If he were alive today, Malthus would also say that there is a close link between the two most urgent tasks which history has given to the 21st century - stabilization of the global population, and abolition of the institution of war.

References

1. Brown, Lester R., and others, The State of the World, W.W. Norton, New York, published annually. [This publication, produced by the Worldwatch Institute, Washington D.C., provides evidence that the global population of humans is rapidly approaching the absolute limits set by the carrying capacity of the earth’s environment.]
2. Carter, K.C. (ed.), Enquiry Concerning Political Justice by William Godwin, with Selections from Godwin’s other Writings, Abridged and Edited, Clarendon, Oxford, (1971). [Godwin’s book, first published in 1793, became a center of hopes for political reform in England, and provoked the publication of T.R. Malthus’ essay on population.]
3. Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de, Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progr`es de l’esprit humain, in French, (Sketch of an Historical Tableau of the Progress of the Human Spirit) 2nd edn., Agasse, Paris, (1795). [Condorcet’s small but important book determined the form in which the idea of human progress was transmitted from the philosophers of the Enlightenment to future generations.]
4. Ehrlich, Paul R., Anne H. Ehrlich and John Holdren, Human Ecology, W.H. Freeman, San Fransisco, (1977). [This book provides an excellent overview of the interaction of human populations with the global environment.]
5. Himmelfarb, Gertrude, The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age, Knopf, New York, (1984). [This book provides a picture of England at the time when Malthus was writing.]
6. James, Patricia, Population Malthus: his Life and Times, Routledge, London, (1979). [This is an extremely carefully compiled biography of T.R. Malthus.]
7. Locke, Don, A Fantasy of Reason: The Life and Thought of William Godwin, Routledge, London, (1980). [Don Locke gives us a colorful description of the debate between Malthus and Godwin.]
8. Malthus, T.R., An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Aects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers, Johnson, London, (1798); An Essay on the Principle of Population, or, A View of its Past and Present Eects on Human Happiness, with an Inquiry into our Prospects Respecting its Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils which it Occasions, 2nd edn., Johnson, London (1803); 6th edn. with an introduction by T.H. Hollingsworth, Everyman’s University Library, J.M. Dent and Sons, London, (1973). [T.R. Malthus modified his essay on population in successive editions, the greatest change being between the original short essay, published in 1798, and the 1803 edition, which was more than three times the length of the original essay.]
9. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future, Oxford University Press, Oxford, (1987). [The Brundtland Report explores the question of whether it will be possible to expand the world’s agricultural output suciently to provide food for a global population of 10 billion people.]
10. Vitousek, V.M., P.R. Ehrlich, A.H. Ehrlich, and P.A. Matson, Human Appropriation of the Products of Photosynthesis, Bioscience 34, 368- 73, (1986). [This paper provides important evidence that the size of the human economy is rapidly approaching absolute limits set by the extent of the earth’s photosynthesis.]

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