Why did population grow so rapidly in the eighteenth-century and why did Malthus's predictions not come true?

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Why did population grow so rapidly in the eighteenth-century and why did Malthus’s predictions not come true?

There is no doubt that there was a great acceleration in population growth during the 18th century in Britain.  In this essay I will look into the causes and effects of this, also why the effect was not a Malthusian catastrophe.

The economist Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) was famous for his pessimistic views on population growth.  He wrote in his paper Essay on the Principles of Population (1798) ‘Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio’ (Malthus 1798).  Malthus had obviously observed the increase in the acceleration of the population growth and foresaw a natural barrier to sustained growth in the form of ‘checks’ on the population.  He outlined two forms of these limitations on growth ‘positive’ and ‘preventive’ checks.  Positive checks raise mortality; normally associated with food prices, as the population grows food gets scarcer, therefore more expensive, real income falls and malnutrition or even famine follow resulting in a population decrease, food prices fall…and so on.  Malthus put forward this cyclical movement.  Other factors such as disease and war would also come into this category.  Preventive checks are checks which lowered fertility, for example people not being able to afford to marry and therefore don’t have children, often thought of as a moral restraint; this would also follow the same cyclical movement as the population rises and falls and real income would fall and rise. ().

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Malthus thought that every nation fitted into one of these two types of society (whether their population was controlled by positive or preventive checks) and could explain why they were relatively rich or poor.  England was obviously a preventive check society along with most of Western Europe.  With ‘low pressure’ demography and standard of living higher, it supports his theory.  His theory became the standard argument against social reform because helping the poor would simply decrease death rates and increase birth rates, eventually there would be too many and their income would fall back to equilibrium again, therefore there was ...

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