Malthus for the Twenty-First Century

WITH BIRTH RATES FALLING, the last gasp of the population explosion may add as few as 2 billion more people to the world's population. Eight billion is the UN's peak population figure, attained by 2050, in the low/medium scenario of its 1996 projection series. (The medium trajectory plateaus at around 10.5 billion later in the century.) If 2 billion is all, however, most of them will come in the next two decades. And 2 billion is not chickenfeed: the world population in 1798, when the anonymous tract An Essay on the Principle of Population appeared, stood at about 0.8 billion—a number that is now being added to the world in a single decade. The Essay acquired an author and transformed itself from tract to treatise. Earlier authorities on its subject were acknowledged and a steadily expanding pudding of country case materials was incorporated. But to most readers the original message still came through: there was a population– food race underway, with dire consequences for the imprudently prolific, whether families or nations. Malthus was, and is, known for little else. Since then, Malthus's worries have of course been attended to, though belatedly and by vice rather than prudence. There was also a massive technological fix in the form of the agricultural and industrial revolutions, shifting the terms of debate on poverty and development away from resource constraints. Remarkable and sustained advances in incomes, education, and, in this century, health were achieved, even if not universal or unalloyed. So, should Malthus therefore be retired, along with his opponents such as Godwin and Owen, with gratitude or disdain, but in either case with acknowledgment that the issue is all but dead—a piece of intellectual history rather than a continuing controversy? As with most important thinkers , the answer is no. A good part of the work retains current relevance, both where it seems on target and where it is blinkered. I shall sample