1. Malthusian Theory of Overpopulation

2. Thomas Malthus English economist (1766-1834) World’s population growth was outrunning food supply In An Essay on Principle of Population (1798), Malthus claims that population grows geometrically and food supply increases arithmetically. Unless there is “moral restraint” to produce lower CBRs, a Malthusian crisis will occur to produce higher CDRs  Disease, famine, war, other disasters.

4. Contemporary Neo-Malthusians Things are more dire than they were 200 years ago for 2 reasons.  1. LDC’s have entered stage 2 of the demographic transition because of the medical revolution. How does this impact the theory?  Gap even wider between population growth and resource availability.  2. Population growth is outstripping a wide variety of resources, not just food production and the world will enter a state of wars and civil violence due to scarcities.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V09jl5WIvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V09jl5WIvw

6. Critics of Malthus Possibilists  Our well being is influenced by conditions of our environment.  Food production is not fixed.  Humans can develop technology increase our production of food. Population is good for society  human resources  Greater economic demand  More powerful militaries Marxists  Population isn’t the problem, Capitalism is.

7. The Reality Things are not as dire as Malthus theorized  Food production has increased during the last half century  Industrial Agriculture  Population growth has not grown at the rate that Malthus thought it would.