https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/thomas-malthus.asp

Thomas Robert Malthus was an influential British economist best known for his theory on population growth, outlined in his 1798 book "An Essay on the Principle of Population."
In it, Malthus argued that populations inevitably expand until they outgrow their available food supply, causing the population growth to be reversed by disease, famine, war, or calamity.
He is also known for developing an exponential formula used to forecast population growth, which is currently known as the Malthusian growth model.
Key Takeaways
- Thomas Malthus was an 18th-century British philosopher and economist noted for the Malthusian growth model, an exponential formula used to project population growth.
- The theory states that the supply of food cannot keep up with the growth of the human population, inevitably resulting in disease, famine, war, and calamity.
- A noted statistician and proponent of political economy, Malthus founded the Statistical Society of London.
- Malthus' theories were later used to justify British colonial policies that worsened the human toll of the Irish Potato Famine.
- His theory is now largely dismissed, as modern farming techniques have allowed food production to scale much faster than Malthus could have anticipated.
Understanding the Ideas of Thomas Malthus
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, some philosophers believed firmly that human society would continue to improve and tilt toward a utopian ideal. Malthus countered this belief, arguing that segments of the general population have invariably been poor and miserable, effectively slowing population growth.
Based on his observation of conditions in England in the early 1800s, Malthus argued that available farmland was insufficient to feed the increasing population. More specifically, he stated that the human population increases geometrically, while food production increases arithmetically.
Under this paradigm, humans would reproduce until their numbers surpassed their production capacity, at which …