Thomas Malthus

Thomas Malthus

He was interested in everything about populations
He accumulated figures on biths, deaths, age of marriage and child bearting and economic factors contributing to longevity.
He linked population and food supply
1. Humans do not overpopulate to the point of starvation, he contended, only because people change their behaviour in the face of economic incentives
Food production tends to increase arithmetically, population tends to increase naturally at a faster, geometric rate.
1. People choose to reduce population growth
  1. They can check population growth more effectively by marrying late, using contraceptives, emigrating, or, in more extreme circumstances, resorting to reduced health care, tolerating vicious social diseases or improvised living conditions, warfare, or even infanticide
2. People can only increase food production from difficult methods such as reclaiming unused land or intensive farming
Malthus was facinated not with the inevitability of human demise, but with why humans do not die off in the face of such overwhelming odds
Malthus is arguably the most misunderstood and misrepresented economist of all time
Because humans have not all starved, economic choices must be at work, and it is the job of an economist to study those choices

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