My Life As Thomas Malthus

Thomas Malthus was interested in everything about populations. He collected statistics on births, deaths, age of marriage and pregnant women, and the economic factors that led to a longer life. His main accomplishment was detailing the relationship between the food supply and the population in Essay on the Principles of Population.

Thomas Robert Malthus was born on February 14, 1766 at Dokering, an area south of London. Malthus's father was named Daniel Malthus and was a Jacobin that had worked with other philosophers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and Hume. Malthus was educated privately by his fathers and a group of private tutors. At 18, he attended Cambridge college where Malthus became a curate, or a person authorized to conduct religious worship, of the Church of England. When Malthus became 38, he got married and left Cambridge. In 1805 he became a professor at Haileybury, a university that was for the general education of the East India Company.

Between 1798 and 1826, Malthus published his major work Essay on the Principles of Population. Malthus argued that when the population is unchecked, it increases at a geometric rate while the food supply increases at a slower rate. The result will be overpopulation and starvation if the human race is not held in check. Malthus stated that there were only two things that kept the population down: vice and misery, two necessary evils being war, famine, and disease. The greatest conclusion of Malthus's Essay on the Principles of Population was that the unchecked population will surpass man's ability to live on this planet.

"The superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice."  

                -Thomas Malthus

Malthus also argued that two types of checks hold population within resource limits: positive checks, which raises death rates; and preventative checks, which lowers birth rates. Malthus had been a realist that had been picked on by the idealists because of his work. There was much criticism by other people that led Malthus to make six different updated editions of Essay on the Principles of Population that included his more updated ideas and responses to the criticism of the critics. Malthus believed that misery and poverty were the inevitable results of the law of nature; no government or person should interfere with it.

Since Malthus was a believer in God as a clergyman, Malthus had the belief that God had the created the tendency for human population to grow, but He had the constant, harsh threat of poverty and starvation to teach the virtues of hard work and good behaviour. Malthus saw poverty as a positive check on population as people would have less offspring that they could not support. Including to that, as wages increased, birth rates were expected to increase while the death rates would drop. To him, increased wages led to population growth.

Thomas Malthus had miscalculated his ideas and had failed to take several factors into consideration. The Industrial Revolution had advances in sanitation, technology, and food- distribution that had led to declining death rates. The new mechanized farms were producing more produce per acre and birth control helped control the rate of births.

"It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment."

                        -Thomas Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus died on December 29, 1834 passing on his knowledge for later generations to come. 

"I think it will be found that experience, the true source and foundation of all knowledge, invariably confirms its truth."

                -Thomas Malthus

"Thomas Robert Malthus." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 15 Feb. 2011. Web. 17 Feb. 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_malthus.

Spielvogel, Jackson J. Western Civilization. 6th ed. Vol. Combined. Southbank, Vic.: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006. Print.