Malthusian Dilemma

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Malthusian Dilemma

• Dmitry Pobedash
• Ural State University

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The Population Challenge

• Until 17th century 0.002 percent annually
• Next 300 years fivefold, from about 500 million
  in 1650 to about 2.5 billion in 1950
• From 1950 to 2000 from about 2.5 billion to
  more than 6 billion

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Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834)
Born near Guildford, Surrey, educated at Jesus
College, the University of Cambridge. Became
curate of the parish of Albury in Surrey in 1798.
From 1805 until his death- professor of political
economy and mo-dern history at the college of the
East India Company at Haileybury.
The Father of Demography
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A Summary View of the Principle of Population

• if the natural increase of population, when
  unchecked by the difficulty of procuring the
  means of subsistence, or other peculiar causes,
  be such as to continue doub-ling its numbers in
  twenty-five years and the greatest increase of
  food, which, for a continuance, could possib-ly
  take place on a limited territory like our earth
  in its pre-sent state, he at the most only such
  as would add every twenty-five years an amount
  equal to its present produ-ce it is, quite clear
  that a powerful check on the increase of
  population must be almost constantly in action.

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The Principle of Population

• Population cannot increase without the means of
  subsistence
• Population invariably increases when the means of
  subsistence are available
• 'the superior power of population cannot be
  checked without producing misery or vice'

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Growth and the Checks

• Growth dilemma the contrast between the
  geometric power of population increase and the
  arithmetic power of improvements in food
  production
• Positive checks higher mortality rates and
  lower life expectancy
• Preventive checks voluntary restraint on
  birth-rates

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Main Positive Checks

• War
• Pestilence
• Famine

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Main Preventive Checks

• Abortion
• Infanticide
• Prostitution
• other unnatural attempts to accommodate the
  constant passion between the sexes while avoiding
  the consequences

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Neo-Malthusian Checks

• Preventive lower birth rates
• Sterilization, castration, celibacy, restraint,
  late marriage, contraception, abnormal sex
  practices, abortion
• Destructive raise death rates
• Infanticide, infant diseases, crime, capital
  punishment, wars and feuds other than over food
  shortage, diseases other than due to
  undernourishment
• Subsistence raise death rates

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Malthusian Reality

• periods of good times associated with high wages
  leading to early marriage and population
  increase, followed by bad times in which distress
  brings population increase to a halt
• 'perpetual oscillation fluctuation' rather than
  unilinear progress

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Marxist Critique

• Malthusian scenario resulted from capitalisms
  tendency to concentrate wealth and resources in
  the hands of the few
• Socialist model would distribute resources
  evenly, could support an indefinite number of
  people
• BUT!
• China instituted a one-child family policy

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Fertility Decline

• The availability and awareness of contraception
• Improved literacy rates
• Reduced infant mortality
• Better economic prospects

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AND!

• The transition to lower fertility rates is
  enhanced by affording women the same educational,
  political, and eco-nomic opportunities available
  to men

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A Slow-Down with Development
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BUT!

• Only about 30 countries at stage 3
• Most at stage 2
• Situation unacceptable for humanitarian reasons
  at stage 1

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Neo-Malthusianism

• John Orme, The Utility of Force in a World of
  Scarcity
• As world population young, even if replacement
  fertility were achieved immediately, the
  expansion would not cease until 2050.
• Replacement levels are not expected in India
  until 2030 and in Africa until 2050
• By 2025 Latin America will be 85 per cent urban,
  Africa will have urban majority

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Limits of Food Production

• Oceans if more fish were removed than at
  present, stocks and future catchesd fall
• Cultivated lands peaked in 1981, since then have
  fallen 8.5 percent
• Fertilization declining since 1989
• Irrigation peaked in 1978, has declined 6
• Agricultural yields growth is less than 1/3 of
  population growth

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Water Shortage

• Global water utilization has tripled since 1950
• China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Libya
  withdraw water faster than its replenished
• US farmers exhaust aquifers under the Great
  Plains and the Central Valley of Ca.

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Consumption

• At US level of consumption the world can sustain
  2 billion people
• 10 billion (UN moderate assessment by 2050) can
  barely survive 1,500 calories daily per capita

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Conflict of Interests

• Persuading the Chinese and other
  long-impoverished peoples to curtail their
  indus-trial development while North Americans,
  Europeans, and Japanese continue to enjoy their
  accustomed standard of living will be no easy
  task.

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Future?

• RMA and spread of industrialization to the
  developing nations
• Malthusian Dilemma
• Hobbesian World gt Utility of Force

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Alternative?

• Spread of industrialization and further
  advance in science and technology (RMA)
• Enhancement of educational, political, and
  economic opportunities for women
• Growing interdependence and glocalization
• Futility rather than Utility of Force