Boserup and Mathusian Theory

Was Malthus right?

'J' Curve - Population Crash Model

But…..

There has been a population explosion

Africa – repeated famines, wars, food crisis, environmental degradation, soil erosion, crop failure and disastrous floods – so was he right?

Technological improvements which he could not have foreseen

The increased amount of cropland due to irrigation

Reduced population growth as countries move through the DTM

The Club of Rome

Positive checks (increased death rate)

Positive Checks were ways to reduce population size by events such as famine, disease, war - increasing the mortality rate and reducing life expectancy.

Negative checks (decreased birth rate)….

Negative Checks were used to limit the population growth. It included abstinence/ postponement of marriage which lowered the fertility rate.

Malthus favoured moral restraint (including late marriage and sexual abstinence) as a check on population growth. However, it is worth noting that Malthus proposed this only for the working and poor classes!

CHECKS

Malthus suggested that once this ceiling (catastrophe) had been reached, further growth in population would be prevented by negative and positive checks. He saw the checks as a natural method of population control. They can be split up into 3 groups….

War, famine, disease.

and therefore he said….

Malthus recognised that population if unchecked, grows at a geometric rate:

1 2 4 8 16 32

However, food only increases at an arithmetic rate, as land is finite.

1 2 3 4 5 6

Population theories

The Core Principles of Malthus:

Food is necessary for human existence

Human population tends to grow faster than the power in the earth to produce subsistence

The effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal

Since humans tend not to limit their population size voluntarily - “preventive checks” in Malthus’ terminology.

Thomas Malthus

1766-1834. Born near Guildford!

Wrote ‘An essay in the First Principle of population’ first published in 1798

Debatable whether the principles of Malthus two hundred years ago (that were very revolutionary and controversial) have any relevance to the modern world.

The world population in 1798 was at nine million people. We have now passed the six billion mark.

Malthus, Boserup and the Club of Rome

But….

Boserup admits overpopulation can lead to unsuitable farming practices which may degrade the land

e.g. population pressure as one of the reasons for desertification in the Sahal region (so fragile environments at risk)

Boserup’s theory based on assumption of ‘closed’ society -not the case in reality (migration)

The boserup, also known as the economic theory is an optimistic theory that relies on innovation and development in order to sustain a population

This is very much a pessimistic look to the future with the theory suggesting a crisis is waiting in the future.

Boserup

Mathusian

This grpah shows the theory as it suggest that the food supply will increase and renovate with population increase.

If we use it looking at previously industrialized countries such as the UK it does make sense and follow the same trend. As population has increased, food production also has to accommodate for the growth.

This graph is similar to Boserup, but shows the point when optimum capacity is reached and after that point there is overpopulation for the available resources.

This theory as well as the Malthusian, would be very hard to test as it is based on a closed country and does not include external alterations such as imigration