A leading classical economist who played a major part in founding modern DEMOGRAPHY. After Cambridge, where he was a student and fellow of Jesus College (1784–1805), for the rest of his career he was professor of modern history and political economy at Haileybury College, Hertfordshire, training clerks for the East India Company
The optimism of William Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) prompted him to write An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) which asserted that population grows in a GEOMETRICAL PROGRESSION but that the means of subsistence increases in only an ARITHMETIC PROGRESSION. Unless population growth is subject to a preventive check (e.g. abortion) or a positive check (war, famine, pestilence) there will be misery and vice. In subsequent editions he included more analysis of population statistics and another check (‘moral restraint’). Despite contemporary criticism, it became a pillar of the Ricardian system.
Later, socialists and other critics attacked such pessimistic predictions for ignoring the beneficial effects of technical progress. Nevertheless Malthus’s Essay was an inspiration to Charles Darwin when he was formulating his theory of evolution. Malthus’s Principles of Political Economy (1820) provided a fuller analysis of value and price theory than RICARDO and discussed the problem of a deficiency in ‘EFFECTUAL DEMAND’ (a general glut), causing KEYNES to rank Malthus as one of his major predecessors as a macroeconomic theorist.
References
Cunningham Wood, J. (1986) Thomas Robert Malthus: Critical Assessments, London: Croom Helm.
James, P. (1979) Population Malthus: His Life and Times, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Wrigley, E.A. and Souden, D. (eds) (1986) The Works of Thomas Robert Malthus, 8 vols, London: Pickering & Chatto.
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