Knowra Thomas Robert Malthus Thomas Robert Malthus Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) was an English economist and Anglican cleric best known for arguing that population can grow faster than food supply, producing recurring pressure on living standards.
Malthusianism : A theory that population tends to outgrow resources, checked by famine, disease, or delayed reproduction. It names the framework Malthus developed from his argument about population and subsistence.
An Essay on the Principle of Population : Malthus's 1798 work arguing that population pressure limits improvements in human welfare. This anonymously published essay first set out his influential population argument.
David Ricardo : A British political economist whose theories of rent, wages, and distribution shaped classical economics. Ricardo and Malthus exchanged influential arguments about rent, wages, and economic growth.
Classical economics : A tradition of economic thought focused on production, distribution, growth, and markets, associated with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers. Malthus helped make population and subsistence central questions in classical political economy.
Karl Marx : A German philosopher and political economist who explained poverty and class conflict through capitalist social relations. Marx rejected Malthus's account of poverty as a natural population problem, emphasizing social arrangements instead.
Positive check : A force that raises mortality, such as famine, disease, or war, reducing population growth. Malthus classified mortality crises as checks that restore population-resource balance.
William Godwin : An English philosopher and political writer whose works envisioned social improvement through reason and institutional change. Malthus wrote his first essay partly to challenge Godwin's optimistic account of social progress.
Charles Darwin : An English naturalist who developed the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin credited Malthus's account of population pressure with helping inspire natural selection.
Iron law of wages : A theory that wages tend toward a subsistence level as population responds to changes in income. This later formulation drew on Malthusian population pressure, though Malthus did not coin the phrase.
Boserupian theory : A theory that population pressure can stimulate agricultural innovation and increase food production. Ester Boserup reversed Malthus's causal emphasis by treating population growth as a driver of intensification.
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