ABSTRACT
The Malthusian debate is concerned with the way in which, through the centuries, economic growth has first induced and then restrained population growth. Great significance has been attached to the ‘break with the past’ at the end of the eighteenth century, when critical economic changes for the first time allowed sustained population growth. However, there is another important perspective from which population growth can be seen as a precondition in some circumstances for economic growth and, possibly, economic transformation. Population growth not only increases the supply of labour; in favourable conditions it increases the demand for both food and manufactured goods.
