SOURCE: Gilbert, Geoffrey. “Economic Growth and the Poor in Malthus' Essay on Population.” History of Political Economy 12, no. 1 (spring 1980): 83-96.

In the following essay, Gilbert explains Malthus's changing views on the effects of economic growth on the working poor in the 1798 and succeeding editions of the Essay on Population.

I

Historians of economic thought have given short shrift to Malthus' treatment of economic growth as it affects the welfare of the working classes, although the issue commands a full chapter in every edition of the Essay on Population. The gist of the argument, as formulated in 1798, is that growth in the national output will be harmful to the working poor if it consists only of manufactured goods, which the working man does not consume, and at the same time entails a transfer of labor from agricultural to “unhealthy” and insecure industrial employment. Edwin Cannan barely mentions the Malthusian...