Thomas Robert Malthus (1766 - 1834) was an English economist, demographer, and Anglican clergyman best known for his influential theory of population. [1] In An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) he argued that human numbers, if unchecked, tend to grow faster than the means of subsistence, so that population is held in balance by poverty, famine, and disease. [3] His ideas shaped nineteenth-century debates on economics and social policy and later influenced Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. [2]
Early life and education
Thomas Robert Malthus was born on 13 February 1766 near Westcott in Surrey, England, into a prosperous family. [1] His father, Daniel Malthus, was a country gentleman acquainted with the philosophers David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and he oversaw much of his son's early education. [1] Malthus studied at the Warrington Academy and, from 1784, at Jesus College, University of Cambridge, where he read mathematics and graduated in 1788. [2] He was ordained in the Church of England and for a time served as a country curate. [1]
An Essay on the Principle of Population
An Essay on the Principle of Population first appeared anonymously in 1798, partly as a rejoinder to the optimistic views of William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet, who foresaw the indefinite improvement of human society. [3] Malthus contended that population, when unchecked, increases in a geometric ratio while the food supply grows only in an arithmetic ratio, so that human numbers press constantly against the limits of subsistence. [3] He distinguished between positive checks that raise the death rate, such as war, famine, and disease, and preventive checks that lower the birth rate, notably the delay of marriage, which he termed moral restraint. [3] He expanded the work through successive editions, culminating in a substantially enlarged version in 1826. [2]
Later career
In 1805 Malthus was appointed professor of history and political economy at the East India Company College at Haileybury, a post generally regarded as the first professorship of political economy in Britain. [2] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1819 and became a founding member of the Political Economy Club and of the Statistical Society of London. [1] In Principles of Political Economy (1820) he examined value, rent, and the possibility of general gluts, or crises of overproduction, a question on which he engaged in a long and friendly debate with his contemporary David Ricardo. [4]
Legacy
Malthus died at Bath on 23 December 1834. [1] His population theory provoked intense controversy and gave rise to the enduring term Malthusian, applied to fears that population growth will outrun available resources. [4] Although later demographic and agricultural change complicated his predictions, his emphasis on the tension between population and resources proved lasting; both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace credited the Essay with helping to inspire their theory of natural selection. [2]
