Annabelle Lunt

Mr. Francis OGrady

Economics
12 October 2014
Thomas Malthus

Malthus was very interested in anything relating to

populations
o He accumulated figures on births, deaths, age
of marriage and childbearing, and economic
factors contributing to longevity
o Main contribution was to highlight the
relationship between food supply and
population
Humans do not overpopulate to the point of
starvation because people change their behavior in
the face of economic incentives
o Food production increase arithmetically but
population increases at a faster geometric
rate; this is why he is not surprised that people choose to reduce population
growth
Was fascinated with why humans do not die off in the face of such overwhelming odds
He was an economist who studied responses to incentives
o He is arguably the most misunderstood and misrepresented economist of all time
Was the man behind Malthusian
o Malthusian is used today to describe a pessimistic prediction of the lock-step
demise of a humanity doomed to starvation via overpopulation
Wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798
o This caused an uproar among non-economists because it overshadowed the instant
respect it inspired among his fellow economists
o His comparison that food increases more slowly than population was often
taken out of context and highlighted as his main observation
o His actual observation is: that humans have not all starved, economic choices
must be at work, and it is the job of an economist to study those choices

He wrote Principles of Political Economy in 1820

o This was the first text to describe a demand schedule as separate from the quantity
demand at a given price
o His exposition of demand curves clarified the debate on Says law and gluts
which he later objected saying that markets self-adjust
His work centered on contrasting the long run, as shown by population growth, with the
short run, reflected by cyclical events such as those affecting agriculture
Malthus died in 1834