Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) was an English demographer and economist recognized by a theory that bears his name: Malthusianism. He roughly suggests that population growth inevitably leads to a decrease in food supply, so he proposes a control of reproduction and birth rate.

Next we will see a biography of Thomas Malthus , as well as some of his main contributions to economic and demographic thought.

Thomas Malthus: biography of a leading economist

Thomas Malthus was born on February 13, 1766 in south London. He was the sixth of seven children, all of whom were the children of Henrietta and Daniel Malthus. They were an important family of intellectuals, who were even close friends of philosophers such as David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau . Over time, Malthus created a close relationship with another great economist of the time, David Ricardo.

From a young age, Thomas Malthus was able to enter Colegio Jesús in Cambridge. There he took courses in declamation, Latin and Greek, although his main subject of study was mathematics. By 1791, Malthus had graduated as a specialist in these areas, so he was appointed to the same college two years later. In 1979 he was ordained and became an Anglican pastor .

Years later, in 1804, he formed a family with Harriet Eckersall, with whom he had three children, and whose education was strongly influenced by Rousseau’s liberal ideas on education.

Like other members of his family, Thomas Malthus had a cleft palate that affected his speech, as well as a cleft lip. For this reason he had refused to take a personal portrait, which was typical at the time. It was not until 1833, after having undergone surgery, that he decided to have it done.

Thomas Robert Malthus died on 29 December 1834 in Rookery , although his remains are in Bath Abbey in England.

Academic activity and memberships

Malthus taught history and political economy at Haileybury College in Hertfordshire. In fact, this was the first time that the term “political economy” was used in an academic context in Britain to refer to a subject.

In 1819 Malthus was elected a member of the Royal Society, and in 1821 he joined the Political Economy Club . Other members of the same society were David Ricardo and James Mill. Almost a decade later, in 1833, Malthus was elected a member of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, as well as a member of the Royal Academy of Berlin. Finally, in 1834, Malthus was one of the founders of the London Statistical Society

Malthusianism

In 1798, Malthus published a first edition of the text “An Essay on the Principles of Population and How They Affect the Future Development of Society”. Since its publication, this work has had a wide impact. Malthus argued forcefully that social development was doomed to failure because of rapid population growth. In turn, population growth would increase increasingly faster if it was not strictly controlled .

Thus, the problem raised by Malthus was that this population growth was not occurring at the same time as the increase in livelihoods.

While population growth had a “geometric rate”, livelihoods increased in a solely “arithmetical” progression. The population would always tend to grow beyond the limits of subsistence , which would eventually translate into poverty, wars, disease and death. For Malthus, one of the remedies would be, for example, self-control and contraception.

Some reviews

His work is recognized as a pessimistic vision, since presented poverty as one of the inevitable phenomena for the human species. Likewise, his work has been criticized for having begun in an abstract and analytical language. In fact, he has been complained of not having carried out rigorous statistical analyses, despite the fact that this research method was in full growth in Europe and Great Britain.

For some critics, although Malthus had used empirical evidence in the development of his theory, the theory itself tended to be less concise in such evidence, and stronger in the development of the theory itself.

In any case, Malthusianism was quickly incorporated into the main economic theories and represented a major break with excessive economic optimism, while providing a justification for the theory of wages based on the minimum cost of living and discredited the more traditional forms of charity.

Outstanding works

Some of the most representative works of Thomas Malthus are An Essay on the Principle of Population , from 1933; An Investigation of the Cause of the Present High Price of Provisions , from 1800; and Principles of Political Economy in two volumes from 2008. Also recognized are works such as Definitions in Political Economy , from 1827 and Importation of Foreign Corn from 1996.

Bibliographic reference:

  • Thomas Robert Malthus (2014). New World Encyclopedia. Retrieved October 1, 2018. Available at http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Thomas_Robert_Malthus.
  • Thomas Robert Malthus (2018). Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved October 1, 2018. Available at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Malthus.