Early influence
Malthus belonged amongst a group of high-quality intellectuals employed by the British East India Company. They included both James Mill and his son, John Stuart Mill; Jeremy Bentham had a major influence on the policy of the company, though not as an employee. Malthus became a respected member of this elite group, and his position as professor at the Haileybury training college, which he held until his death in 1834, gave his theories some influence over Britain's administration of India. As an indication of the group's influence, note Lord William Bentinck's remark to James Mill at a farewell dinner before he left to take up the post of Governor-General of India (in office: 1828-1835): "It is you that will be Governor-General".
According to Malthus's biographer William Peterson, British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger (in office: 1783–1801 and 1804–1806), upon reading the work of Malthus, withdrew a Bill he had introduced that called for the extension of Poor Relief. Concerns about Malthus's theory helped promote the idea of a national population census in the UK. Government official John Rickman became instrumental in the carrying out of the first modern British census in 1801, under Pitt's administration. In the 1830s Malthus's writings strongly influenced Whig reforms which overturned Tory paternalism and brought in the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834.
Before Malthus, commentators had regarded high fertility as an economic advantage, because it increased the number of workers available to the economy. Malthus, however, looked at fertility from a new perspective and convinced most economists that even though high fertility might increase the gross output, it tended to reduce output
per capita. A number of other notable economists, such as David Ricardo (whom Malthus knew personally) and Alfred Marshall admired Malthus and/or came under his influence. Malthus took pride in the fact that some of the earliest converts to his population theory included Archdeacon William Paley, whose
Natural Theology first appeared in 1802. Ironically, given Malthus's own opposition to contraception, his work exercised a strong influence on Francis Place (1771—1854), whose neo-Malthusian movement became the first to advocate contraception. Place published his
Illustrations and Proofs of the Principles of Population in 1822.
Later influence
At Haileybury, Malthus developed a theory of demand-supply mismatches which he called gluts. Considered ridiculous at the time, his theory foreshadowed later theories about the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the works of economist and Malthus-admirer John Maynard Keynes (1883—1946).
Malthusian ideas continue to have considerable influence. Paul R. Ehrlich has written several books predicting famine as a result of population increase:
The Population Bomb (1968);
Population, resources, environment: issues in human ecology (1970, with Anne Ehrlich);
The end of affluence (1974, with Anne Ehrlich);
The population explosion (1990, with Anne Ehrlich). In the late 1960s Ehrlich predicted that hundreds of millions would die from a coming overpopulation-crisis in the 1970s. Other examples of applied Malthusianism include the 1972 book
The Limits to Growth (published by the Club of Rome) and the Global 2000 report to the then President of the United States of America Jimmy Carter. Science-fiction author Isaac Asimov issued many appeals for population-control reflecting the perspective articulated by people from Robert Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
More , a school of "neo-Malthusian" scholars has begun to link population and economics to a third variable, political change and political violence, and to show how the variables interact. In the early 1980s, James Goldstone linked population variables to the English Revolution of 1640-1660 and David Lempert devised a model of demographics, economics, and political change in the multi-ethnic country of Mauritius. Goldstone has since modeled other revolutions by looking at demographics and economics and Lempert has explained Stalin's purge and the Russian Revolution of 1917 in terms of demographic factors that drive political economy. Ted Robert Gurr has also modeled political violence, such as in the Palestinian territories and in Rwanda/Congo (two of the world's regions of most rapidly growing population) using similar variables in several comparative cases. These approaches suggest that political ideology follows demographic forces.
Malthus, sometimes regarded as the founding father of modern demography,continues to inspire and influence futuristic visions, such as those of K Eric Drexler relating to space advocacy and molecular nanotechnology. As Drexler put it in
Engines of Creation (1986): "In a sense, opening space will burst our limits to growth, since we know of no end to the universe. Nevertheless, Malthus was essentially right."
The Malthusian growth model now bears Malthus's name. The logistic function of Pierre Francois Verhulst (1804—1849) results in the S-curve. Verhulst developed the logistic growth model favored by so many critics of the Malthusian growth model in 1838 only after reading Malthus's essay. Malthus has also inspired retired physics professor, Albert Bartlett, to lecture over 1,500 times on "Arithmetic, Population, and Energy", promoting sustainable living and explaining the mathematics of overpopulation.
- [Malthus] became the best-abused man of the age
- There is hardly a cherished ideology, left or right, that is not brought into question by the principle of population.
- One of the 100 most influential people of all time.
Social theory
Despite use of the term "Malthusian catastrophe" by detractors such as economist Julian Simon (1932—1998), Malthus himself did not write that mankind faced an inevitable future catastrophe. Rather, he offered an evolutionary social theory of population dynamics as it had acted steadily throughout all previous history. Eight major points regarding population dynamics appear in the
1798 Essay:
- subsistence severely limits population-level
- when the means of subsistence increases, population increases
- population-pressures stimulate increases in productivity
- increases in productivity stimulate further population-growth
- because productivity increases cannot maintain the potential rate of population growth, population requires strong checks to keep parity with the carrying-capacity
- individual cost/benefit decisions regarding sex, work, and children determine the expansion or contraction of population and production
- checks will come into operation as population exceeds subsistence-level
- the nature of these checks will have significant effect on the larger sociocultural system ... Malthus points specifically to misery, vice, and poverty
Malthusian social theory influenced Herbert Spencer's idea of the survival of the fittest, and the modern ecological-evolutionary social theory of Gerhard Lenski and Marvin Harris. Malthusian ideas have thus contributed to the canon of socioeconomic theory.
The first Director-General of UNESCO, Julian Huxley, wrote of
The crowded world in his
Evolutionary Humanism (1964), calling for a world population policy. Huxley openly criticised communist and Roman Catholic attitudes to birth control, population control and overpopulation.
Biology
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace each read and acknowledged the role played by Malthus in the development of their own ideas. Darwin referred to Malthus as "that great philosopher", and said: "This is the doctrine of Malthus, applied with manifold force to the animal and vegetable kingdoms, for in this case there can be no artificial increase of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage".Darwin also wrote:
"In October 1838... I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population... it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species."—Barlow, Nora 1958. The autobiography of Charles Darwin. p128
Wallace stated:
"But perhaps the most important book I read was Malthus's Principles of Population... It was the first great work I had yet read treating of any of the problems of philosophical biology, and its main principles remained with me as a permanent possession, and twenty years later gave me the long-sought clue to the effective agent in the evolution of organic species.—Wallace, Alfred Russel 1908. My life: a record of events and opinions.
Ronald Fisher commented sceptically on Malthusianism as a basis for a theory of natural selection.Fisher did not deny Malthus's basic premises, but emphasised the role of fecundity.John Maynard Smith doubted that famine functioned as the great leveller, as portrayed by Malthus, but he also accepted the basic premises:
"[A population] cannot increase logarithmically for ever. Sooner or later, a shortage of resources must bring the increase to a halt. It was this insight which led both Darwin and Wallace acquired by reading... Malthus, and which led to the idea of natural selection."—Maynard Smith, John 1998. Evolutionary genetics. 2nd ed Oxford. p17