Are the ideas of Thomas Malthus relevant to the early twenty-first century?

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Are the ideas of Thomas Malthus relevant to the early twenty-first century?

Thomas Malthus was and English demographer and economist best known for his pessimistic but highly influential views.  Malthus was concerned about what he saw as, the decline of living conditions in nineteenth century England.  Thomas Malthus wrote and published his now famous essay on ‘The principle of population’ in 1798.  It offers a pessimistic view over the dangers of over population, and states it would eventually lead to a shortage of food on a global scale, poverty, hunger and disease.  This essay is going to define whether or not Malthus was correct in predicting future events by comparing his theories with today’s societies.  During the time Malthus wrote this, the industrial revolution was in its infancy.

The Malthusian Theory states that the human population increases in a geometric fashion, whereas food supplies increase arithmetically due to food supplies being limited availability in land and technology.  Malthus recognised that fertile land could be made more productive by improved organisation and increased investment; however, he still insisted that there was a point when the ‘law of diminishing returns’ kicks in.  This law states that if one factor of production is increased while the others remain constant, the overall returns will relatively decrease after a certain point.  Malthus also stated that the ‘laws of nature’ dictate that a population can never increase beyond the food supplies necessary to support it.  

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Thomas Malthus has strict religious views.  He believed that population growth was controlled by ‘checks’, these being methods to prevent numbers of people increasing beyond the optimum population.  Malthus saw these checks as nature’s way of dealing with over-population.  There are two kinds of ‘checks’, one is positive ‘checks’ (such as inadequate food, famine, disease and war) and the other is preventative ‘checks’ (such as delayed marriages and abstaining from sexual relations, contraception and homosexuality).  These ‘checks’ will be achieved by death rates increasing (positive) and birth rates falling (preventative).  Malthus believed these ‘checks’ would take place due to ...

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