[Guide to the Market Economy] The Error of Malthus’s Population Theory

Malthus: “Because Population Grows Faster Than Food, the Earth Is Doomed”

…Productivity surges through technological progress…advanced countries now worry about population decline

The British thinker Thomas Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, a book that would have an enormous impact on human history. In it, he compared the rate of growth in food production with the rate of population growth and predicted that humanity would soon face a severe food shortage. The phrase still familiar to modern ears—“food increases arithmetically, while population increases geometrically”—originated with Malthus.

Malthus and the Doomsayers

An arithmetic progression increases like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … while a geometric progression increases like 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 …. If the gap between food and population widened in this way, humanity could never endure it. Concerned about humanity’s future, Malthus even called for active population-control policies based on the conclusions of An Essay on the Principle of Population, including proposing sterilization procedures for the poor.

Fortunately, it was not long before Malthus’s prediction was shown to be false. But his apocalyptic view of the future lives on even today. In 1968, a group of intellectuals and scientists created a nonprofit research organization called the Club of Rome. Taking into account trends in environmental pollution and resource depletion, the Club of Rome warned that humanity would face the limits to growth within 100 years. Of course, that claim too was later proven false.

Although the predictions of Malthus and the Club of Rome missed the mark, their arguments had a considerable influence even here in Korea, on the opposite side of the globe. A case in point was the birth-control policy of the 1960s through the 1980s, which proclaimed, “If you keep having children thoughtlessly, you can’t avoid ending up a beggar.” Our family-planning policy achieved a level of success with few parallels anywhere in the world. In a sense, Korea was the most faithful 20th-century heir to Malthus.

His Law of Diminishing Returns Was Wrong

Why, then, was Malthus wrong? Even during his lifetime, Malthus was a renowned economist, and the theoretical basis of An Essay on the Principle of Population also rested on an economic foundation: what introductory economics today calls the law of diminishing returns.

Diminishing returns refers to the phenomenon in which, when producing goods, increasing an individual factor of production such as capital or labor raises total output, but once production exceeds a certain level, the additional increase in output—marginal product—gradually declines. Put simply, if the population grows, humanity will increase the number of farmers working the land. But because the amount of land—the most important factor in farming—is fixed, agricultural output does not rise in proportion no matter how many farmers are added. Malthus believed this is where the gap between food and population arises, and that famine therefore becomes difficult to avoid.

Today, we know well why Malthus’s prediction was mistaken. Although the amount of land did not increase, science and technology advanced by leaps and bounds. As agricultural technology improved, the productivity of both capital and labor rose sharply. Advances in biology produced seeds with higher yields per unit, and advances in mechanical engineering produced farm machinery with superior performance. In economic terms, technological progress shifted the agricultural supply curve upward, increasing output.

In fact, the law of diminishing returns that Malthus focused on is, by nature, a theory that fits the short run better than the long run. In the short run, the level of technology is fixed. But in the long run, the level of technology is also a variable that can change as flexibly as the amount of labor or capital投入. Living before the Industrial Revolution was fully under way, Malthus could hardly have been expected to foresee that advances in agricultural technology would overcome diminishing returns.

There was, however, a more fundamental reason Malthus was wrong: he did not understand the value of human beings. To Malthus, humans were merely creatures that consumed the earth’s resources. If natural resources were fixed while population kept growing, then the conclusion that all humanity would be placed in danger naturally followed. But people are, in themselves, an innovative resource. Malthus failed to anticipate technological progress partly because of the limitations of his era, but ultimately it was largely because he did not trust in the human capabilities that drive such progress.

Human Beings Themselves Are an Excellent Resource

Modern humanity has created remarkable science and technologies that feed a larger population while consuming fewer resources and causing less environmental strain. Human beings are not merely consumers who use up resources; they are themselves the finest producers and innovators. Contrary to the thinking of Malthus and, later, the Club of Rome, modern human history can be described as the history of a growing population generating not only more ideas but better ideas, thereby transforming scientific and technological civilization.

Embarrassing as it might be for Malthus, who worried about population growth, advanced countries today are unexpectedly more concerned about population decline. In Korea, Japan, and Western Europe, population aging has emerged as a national-level issue, and some countries are already suffering from population decline. Korea, once a global model of birth control, changed its family-planning slogan in 2006 to: “More births, more hope; more childrearing, more happiness.”

■ Please remember

Malthus worried about humanity’s future, saying, “food increases arithmetically, while population increases geometrically.” Based on the conclusions of An Essay on the Principle of Population, he even called for active population-control policies, including sterilization procedures for the poor. But fortunately, it was not long before Malthus’s prediction was shown to be false.

Sung-no Choi, President, Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

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Original title: [시장경제 길라잡이] 맬서스 인구론의 오류

Author: Sung-no Choi

Date: 2020-06-01

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=8&idx=22785