Who is Thomas Malthus? Why is he relevant today? Solution You are here: Science

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You are here: Science >> Learn More about Origin of Species! >> Malthus Who is Thomas Malthus? Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) was a British scholar and minister of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Malthus was ordained as a Minister of the Church of England in 1788. He is most famous for his "Essay on the Principle of Population" (1798). In this work, Malthus proposed several ideas that were contradictory to the optimistic social philosophies of the time. His work was alternately applauded and criticized by various groups, though his influence on Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection was considerable. In the end, Malthus is best remembered for his contribution to Darwin's evolutionary theories than for anything else. In "Population," Thomas Malthus proposed that populations, both human and animal, grow at an exponential rate. That is, populations grow through repeated multiplication. At the same time, he stated that food supplies can only grow at an arithmetic rate. That is, food supplies grow through repeated addition. This means that populations will always grow far faster than the food required to support them. Malthus believed that so-called "positive checks" (such as plagues and starvation) and "preventive checks" (such as birth control measures and delayed marriage), worked to keep population growth and food growth in balance. Malthus proposed that famine and disease were natural consequences of population increases. He believed that these occurrences were inevitable. Malthus decided that to prevent worldwide catastrophe, the poor should not be encouraged to have large families, but should instead be encouraged to have smaller families, through direct or indirect means. He generally discouraged the notion of social services that supported the poor. The ideas that Thomas Malthus developed came before the industrial revolution and focuses on plants, animals, and grains as the key components of diet. Therefore, for Malthus, available productive farmland was a limiting factor in population growth. With the industrial revolution and increase in agricultural production, land has become a less important factor than it was during the 18th century. Thomas Malthus also advocated welfare reform. Recent Poor Laws had provided a system of welfare that provided an increased amount of money depending on the number of children in a family. Malthus argued that this only encouraged the poor to give birth to more children as they would have no fear that increased numbers of offspring would make eating any more difficult.

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