ABSTRACT
Essentially the outstanding and long-lasting contribution of Malthus to debates on the nature of development has been to argue that whereas population had the potential to grow exponentially, the resource base to support that population with food and other essentials could only grow arithmetically, thus much more slowly. He assumed a relatively fixed relationship between population and resources, taking resources, and specifically the amount of agricultural land, almost as givens that could not really be created. If this were so, then ultimately population growth must outstrip resources. Control of population growth, Malthus argued, was therefore necessary, and could be and had indeed largely been achieved by preventive measures in society. He identified ‘preventive checks’ that controlled fertility, essentially through sexual restraint outside and within marriage (but not the use of
contraception). However, where these failed, then the balance would inevitably be established by ‘positive checks’, that is, negative constraints affecting mortality, primarily by ‘natural’ factors, such as disease, famine and (not quite ‘natural’) warfare, which were generally beyond social control and were in most cases seriously unwelcome. Malthus saw in the rapidly urbanising and industrialising Great Britain of his own time an increasing level of poverty, which he attributed largely to the effects of large families and population growth.
