Thomas Robert Malthus (; 13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834)Several sources give Malthus's date of death as 15 December 1834. See Meyers Konversationslexikon (Leipzig, 4th edition, 1885–1892), "Biography" by Nigel Malthus (the memorial transcription reproduced in this article). However, the article in gives 23 December 1834. was an English economist, Christian priest, and scholar influential in the fields of political economy and demography.
In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the population, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to use abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view and stance that has become known as the "Malthusian trap" or the "Malthusian spectre". Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want, and greater susceptibility to war, famine, and disease, a pessimistic view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe. Malthus wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible.Geoffrey Gilbert, introduction to Malthus T.R. 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Oxford World's Classics reprint. viii in Oxford World's Classics reprint.
Malthus considered population growth as inevitable whenever conditions improved, thereby precluding real progress towards a utopian society: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man." As an Anglican cleric, he saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behavior. Malthus wrote that "the increase of population is necessarily limited by subsistence", "population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase", and "the superior power of population repress by moral restraint, vice, and misery."Malthus, p. 61.
Malthus criticised the Poor Laws for leading to inflation rather than improving the well-being of the poor.Malthus, pp. 39–45. He supported taxes on grain imports (the Corn Laws).Malthus, p. xx. His views became influential and controversial across economic, political, social and scientific thought. Pioneers of evolutionary biology read him, notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. | Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison read Malthus. Malthus's failure to predict the Industrial Revolution was a frequent criticism of his theories. Malthus laid the "theoretical foundation of the conventional wisdom that has dominated the debate, both scientifically and ideologically, Daoud citing on global hunger and famines for almost two centuries." Daoud citing Kutzner, Patricia L. (1991). World Hunger: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio.
Early life and education Thomas Robert Malthus was the sixth of seven children of Daniel Malthus and Henrietta Catherine, daughter of Daniel Graham, apothecary to kings George II and George III, and granddaughter of Thomas Graham, apothecary to kings George I and George II. Henrietta was depicted alongside her siblings in William Hogarth's painting, The Graham Children (1742).The Tate Gallery: An Illustrated Companion to the National Collections of British & Modern Foreign Art. London: Tate Gallery, 1979, p. 15 Malthus was born at The Rookery, a "small elegant mansion" at Westcott, near Dorking in Surrey, which his father had bought—at that time called Chertgate Farm—and converted into "a gentleman's seat"; the family sold it in 1768 and moved to "a less extensive establishment at Albury, not far from Guildford". Malthus had a cleft lip and palate which affected his speech; such birth defects had occurred in previous generations of his family. His friend, the social theorist Harriet Martineau, who was hard of hearing, nevertheless stated that due to his sonorous voice he was the only person she could hear well without her ear trumpet.Martineau, Harriet 1877. Autobiography. 3 vols, Smith, Elder, London. vol 1, p. 327.Essays in Biography, J. M. Keynes, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1933, pp. 96–99 William Petersen and John Maynard Keynes describe Daniel Malthus as "a gentleman of good family and independent means [...] [and] a friend of David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau". Daniel Malthus was son of Sydenham Malthus, who was a clerk of Chancery and director of the South Sea Company; he was also "proprietor of several landed properties in the Home Counties and Cambridgeshire". Sydenham Malthus's father, Daniel, had been apothecary to King William and later to Queen Anne; Daniel's father, Rev. Robert Malthus, was appointed vicar of Northolt, Middlesex (now West London) under the regicide Cromwell, but "evicted at the Restoration"; he was described as "an ancient divine, a man of strong reason, and mighty in the Scriptures, of great eloquence and fervour, though defective in elocution", due to "a very great impediment in his utterance" which has been concluded to be likely to have been a cleft palate.Petersen, William. 1979. Malthus. Heinemann, London. 2nd ed., 1999. p. 21Essays in Biography, J. M. Keynes, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1933, pp. 96–97, 99–103 The young Malthus received his education at the Warrington Academy from 1782, where he was taught by Gilbert Wakefield. Warrington was a dissenting academy, which closed in 1783. Malthus continued for a period to be tutored by Wakefield at the latter's home in Bramcote, Nottinghamshire.The Popularization of Malthus in Early Nineteenth-Century England – Martineau, Cobbett, and the Pauper Press, James P. Huzel, Ashgate, 2006, p. 15
Malthus entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1784. While there, he took prizes in English declamation, Latin and Greek, and graduated with honours, Ninth Wrangler in mathematics. His tutor was William Frend.Petersen, William. 1979. Malthus. Heinemann, London. 2nd ed., 1999. p. 28 He took the MA degree in 1791, and was elected a Fellow of Jesus College two years later. In 1789, he took orders in the Church of England, and became a curate at Oakwood Chapel (also Okewood) in the parish of Wotton, Surrey.
Population growth
Malthus came to prominence for his 1798 publication, An Essay on the Principle of Population. He wrote the original text in reaction to the optimism of his father and his father's associates (notably Jean-Jacques Rousseau) regarding the future improvement of society. He also constructed his case as a specific response to writings of William Godwin and of the Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794).Henry-James Meiring, "Thomas Robert Malthus, Naturalist of the Mind," Annals of Science 77 (2020): 495–523 Many questioned and criticised the book. In response, he published six revisions of An Essay on the Principle of Population, before 1826. Each time he updated the book to incorporate new material, to address criticism, and to convey changes in his own perspectives on the subject.
In the decades following its publication, the Essay gave rise to the Malthusian controversy in which attention was focused on the birth rate and marriage rates. Many years later the neo-Malthusian controversy saw a similar central role assigned to the numbers of children born.
Malthusian theory is a way to explain how population and food production expand, stating that food production grows arithmetically while the population grows exponentially. The theory is producing a strident debate on the relevance of Malthusian theory in the present world.
The Malthusian theory is flawed in various ways. First, the theory disregards technological advancement. Food production has grown as a result of technological advancements such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Second, the mathematical model employed to formulate the hypothesis is not widely applicable since it was based on England's situation. If the population/food modeling examines Australia, it may foretell that food production will exceed population increase. The Malthusian hypothesis is also limited by social change about family size, as some people prefer a smaller family owing to economic restrictions.
Food production can outpace population expansion, as was seen in the industrial revolution. The theory is also limited by its basis in the belief that overall income is a key factor of population health, implying that wealthy countries will have solutions for their rapidly rising populations. An expanding population can be considered as an increase of available human capacity for increasing food production. The Malthusian theory is based on the rule of decreasing returns in the area of food production. That limits its applicability.
Malthus's theory fails to see the effect if birth rates are larger or smaller than death rates. That hampers its application, because it was possible that a population with many births was not increasing quicker than the rate of food production due to many people dying.
Travel and further career In 1799, Malthus made a European tour with William Otter, a close college friend, travelling part of the way with Edward Daniel Clarke and John Marten Cripps, visiting Germany, Scandinavia and Russia. Malthus used the tour to gather population data. Otter later wrote a Memoir of Malthus for the second (1836) edition of his Principles of Political Economy. During the Peace of Amiens of 1802 he travelled to France and Switzerland, in a party that included his relation and future wife Harriet.
In 1803, he became rector of Walesby, Lincolnshire.
In 1805, Malthus became Professor of History and Political Economy at the East India Company College in Hertfordshire.Malthus, T.R. 1798. The Essay of the Population Principle. Oxford World's Classics reprint: xxix, Chronology. His students affectionately referred to him as "Pop", "Population", or "web-toe" Malthus.
Near the end of 1817, the proposed appointment of Graves Champney Haughton to the college was made a pretext by Randle Jackson and Joseph Hume to launch an attempt to close it down. Malthus wrote a pamphlet defending the college, which was reprieved by the East India Company within the same year, 1817.
In 1818, Malthus became a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Malthus–Ricardo debate on political economy
During the 1820s, a setpiece intellectual discussion took place among the exponents of political economy, often called the Malthus–Ricardo debate after its leading figures, Malthus and theorist of free trade David Ricardo, both of whom had written books with the title Principles of Political Economy. Under examination were the nature and methods of political economy itself, while it was simultaneously under attack from others. The roots of the debate were in the previous decade. In The Nature of Rent (1815), Malthus had dealt with economic rent, a major concept in classical economics. Ricardo defined a theory of rent in his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817): he regarded rent as value in excess of real production—something caused by ownership rather than by free trade. Rent therefore represented a kind of negative money that landlords could pull out of the production of the land, by means of its scarcity.On The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, London: John Murray, Albemarle-Street, by David Ricardo, 1817 (third edition 1821) – Chapter 6, On Profits: paragraph 28, "Thus, taking the former ..." and paragraph 33, "There can, however ..." Contrary to this concept, Malthus proposed rent to be a kind of economic surplus.