Malthus's Population Theory

Malthus's Population Theory.

3. The classical school - contributions of Thomas R. Malthus

Moreover, Malthus strict beliefs affected by the theological viewpoint made him think that birth control or abortions could never be as a solution of population growth problems, he even called positive checks increasing the death rate law of the nature. Furthermore, he confused natural passion between the sexes with a desire to have kids. Malthus’ arguments about birth control were that it is too easy to satisfy your sexual desires and run away with no subsequence. The author strongly believed that birth control is reprehensible and the only solution is postponement of marriage and appropriate moral and religious views. He was making a moral judgment and trying to appeal to morality what is not really appropriate behavior according to other writers. His theological views made his theory into some kind of theological work discussing things like evil and God.

On the one hand, the data and statistics Malthus’ collected was indecisive because his theory was not able to confront empirical evidence. He even said that any disagreements between his theory and statistical data are not affecting his theory. On the other hand, Malthus theory is a social science work thus the theory cannot be ever falsified because it do not have a specific period of time and can appear to be real any time in the future. Other authors even mentioned that Malthus theory cannot even be called a science work in the view that only science can be falsified.

In his work Malthus did not give any proof of his statement that population increased exactly in geometric progression and food supply increased exactly in arithmetic progression. It has been pretty clear that population and food supply do not change in conformity with these mathematical series. Growth of population and food production cannot be expected to show the precision or accuracy of such series.

Also, Malthus made a mistake because he researched economic growth in conditions of growing population, fixed land and law of diminishing returns but without technological changes. Technological progress can compensate the law of diminishing returns and even improve the standard of living.