The Malthusian trap or population trap is a condition whereby excess population

would stop growing due to shortage of food supply leading to starvation. It is

named for Thomas Robert Malthus, who suggested that while technological advances
could increase a society's supply of resources, such as food, and thereby improve
the standard of living, the resource abundance would enable population growth,
which would eventually bring the per capita supply of resources back to its
original level. Some economists contend that since the industrial revolution,
mankind has broken out of the trap.[2][3] Others argue that the continuation of
extreme poverty indicates that the Malthusian trap continues to operate.[4] Others
further argue that due to lack of food availability coupled with excessive
pollution, developing countries show more evidence of the trap.[5]

Contents

1 Malthus' theoretical argument

1.1 Evidence to support the theory
2 Neo-Malthusian view
3 Theory that society has overcome the trap
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References

Malthus' theoretical argument

Malthus argued that society has a natural propensity to increase its population, a
propensity that causes population growth to be the best measure of the happiness of
a people: "The happiness of a country does not depend, absolutely, upon its
poverty, or its riches, upon its youth, or its age, upon its being thinly, or fully
inhabited, but upon the rapidity with which it is increasing, upon the degree in
which the yearly increase of food approaches to the yearly increase of an
unrestricted population."[6]

However, the propensity for population increase also leads to a natural cycle of
abundance and shortages:

We will suppose the means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy
support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards population...increases the
number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. The food therefore
which before supported seven millions, must now be divided among seven millions and
a half or eight millions. The poor consequently must live much worse, and many of
them be reduced to severe distress. The number of labourers also being above the
proportion of the work in the market, the price of labour must tend toward a
decrease; while the price of provisions would at the same time tend to rise. The
labourer therefore must work harder to earn the same as he did before. During this
season of distress, the discouragements to marriage, and the difficulty of rearing
a family are so great, that population is at a stand. In the mean time the
cheapness of labour, the plenty of labourers, and the necessity of an increased
industry amongst them, encourage cultivators to employ more labour upon their land;
to turn up fresh soil, and to manure and improve more completely what is already in
tillage; till ultimately the means of subsistence become in the same proportion to
the population as at the period from which we set out. The situation of the
labourer being then again tolerably comfortable, the restraints to population are
in some degree loosened; and the same retrograde and progressive movements with
respect to happiness are repeated.
?Thomas Malthus, 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population, Chapter II.

Malthus faced opposition from economists both during his life and since. A vocal
critic several decades later was Friedrich Engels.[7][8]
Evidence to support the theory
Research indicates that technological superiority and higher land productivity had
significant positive effects on population density but insignificant effects on the
standard of living during the time period 11500 AD.[9] In addition, scholars have
reported on the lack of a significant trend of wages in various places over the
world for very long stretches of time.[3][10] In Babylonia during the period 1800
to 1600 BC, for example, the daily wage for a common laborer was enough to buy
about 15 pounds of wheat. In Classical Athens in about 328 BC, the corresponding
wage could buy about 24 pounds of wheat. In England in 1800 AD the wage was about
13 pounds of wheat.[3]:50 In spite of the technological developments across these
societies, the daily wage hardly varied. In Britain between 1200 and 1800, only
relatively minor fluctuations from the mean (less than a factor of two) in real
wages occurred. Following depopulation by the Black Death and other epidemics, real
income in Britain peaked around 14501500 and began declining until the British
Agricultural Revolution.[11] Historian Walter Scheidel posits that waves of plague
following the initial outbreak of the Black Death throughout Europe had a leveling
effect that changed the ratio of land to labor, reducing the value of the former
while boosting that of the latter, which lowered economic inequality by making
employers and landowners less well off while improving the economic prospects and
living standards of workers. He says that "the observed improvement in living
standards of the laboring population was rooted in the suffering and premature
death of tens of millions over the course of several generations." This leveling
effect was reversed by a "demographic recovery that resulted in renewed population
pressure."[12]

Robert Fogel published a study of lifespans and nutrition from about a century
before Malthus to the 19th century that examined European birth and death records,
military and other records of height and weight that found significant stunted
height and low body weight indicative of chronic hunger and malnutrition. He also
found short lifespans that he attributed to chronic malnourishment which left
people susceptible to disease. Lifespans, height and weight began to steadily
increase in the UK and France after 1750. Fogel's findings are consistent with
estimates of available food supply.[13]
Neo-Malthusian view
See also: Malthusianism

The rapid increase in the global population of the past century exemplifies
Malthus's predicted population patterns, whereby expansion of food supply has
encouraged population growth. "Neo-Malthusianism" may be used as a label for those
who are concerned that human overpopulation may increase resource depletion or
environmental degradation to a degree that is not sustainable. Many in
environmental movements express concern over the potential dangers of population
growth.[14] In 1968, ecologist Garrett Hardin published an influential essay in
Science that drew heavily from Malthusian theory. His essay, "The Tragedy of the
Commons," argued that "a finite world can support only a finite population" and
that "freedom to breed will bring ruin to all."[15] The Club of Rome published a
famous book entitled The Limits to Growth in 1972.[16] Paul R. Ehrlich is a
prominent neo-Malthusians who first raised concerns in 1968 with the publication of
The Population Bomb.

In 2011 Andrey Korotayev suggested that the emergence of major sociopolitical

upheavals at the escape from the Malthusian trap is not an abnormal, but a regular
phenomenon.[17]
Theory that society has overcome the trap
See also: Industrial Revolution Causes, and British Agricultural Revolution

The view that a "breakout" from the Malthusian trap has led to an era of sustained
economic growth is explored by "unified growth theory".[2] One branch of unified
growth theory is devoted to the interaction between human evolution and economic
development. Some argue that natural selection during the Malthusian epoch selected
beneficial traits to the growth process and brought about the Industrial
Revolution.[18]

Some researchers contend that a British breakout occurred due to technological

improvements and structural change away from agricultural production, while coal,
capital, and trade played a minor role.[19] Economic historian Gregory Clark has
argued, in his book A Farewell to Alms, that a British breakout may have been
caused by differences in reproduction rates among the rich and the poor (the rich
were more likely to marry, tended to have more children, and, in a society where
disease was rampant and childhood mortality at times approached 50%, upper-class
children were more likely to survive to adulthood than poor children.) This in turn
led to sustained "downward mobility": the descendants of the rich becoming more
populous in British society and spreading middle-class values such as hard work and
literacy.