Sociological Perspectives of Population and the Caribbean Thomas Malthus and Neo-Malthusian - Written By Raliegh Barnett Dip Teach; BEd; MAt

                             Sociological Perspectives of Population and the Caribbean

                                            Thomas Malthus and Neo-Malthusian

Thomas Malthus wrote a lot on population dynamics. His thesis could be considered integral in the planning of a population’s economy. Economics like Malthus theory of population dynamics and transition is hinged on the availability of resources. In 1798 Thomas Malthus an English economics published “the principle of population”. As discussed before in my previous essay Malthus disagreed with the idea of many theorists whom suggested that human knowledge will aid in the development of mankind. Malthus viewed this ideology as false and unrealistic.

Malthus suggested that human existence throughout the future is hinged on the availability of food. In addition Malthus was also concerned about the passion humans have for each other resulting in sex and reproduction. Based on his economic background , Malthus assumed that the rate in which humans are consuming the existing resources far out paste the rate in which the world is able to reproduce enough to maintain the existing population. In short Thomas Malthus believed that the world's population tends to increase at a faster rate than its food supply. Malthus suggested that the food supply for the world grows arithmetically while the world’s population grew geometrically.

Thomas Malthus suggested the need for a check on population growth. Without such, Malthus suggested that the world will eventually run out of resources. Malthus hinted at two types of checks which could prevent or limit the eventual extinction of mankind. Malthus suggested that preventative check and positive check could be used. In reference to preventative checks, Malthus suggested that voluntary limitations of population growth could exist. Malthus suggested that before marriage, the size of the family should be weighed against income and the expected quality of life each individual in the family will eventually experience. Each person male and female should think rationally about their ability to support themselves and their families. With the size of the family determine on affordability, population growth will decrease. It was also suggested that this initiative should decrease famines and wars.

Malthus argued that should each family ignore their ability to support their family and procreate, population size will increase exponentially. This will increase diseases, famines and wars. Malthus suggested that if his call for a voluntary decrease in population size is ignored preventative population control will occur. Preventative population control include the spread of diseases due to lack of food and nutrients to the human body, War, as each country decrease in food supply war will occur with those with adequate resources. This eventuality will occur as famine will be widely felt throughout the world. In a sense the population of the world will decrease and in short order enough resources will eventually be available. This cycle will occur as long as no care in spent managing population growth.

It was the belief of Thomas Malthus that the preventive and positive checks use to control population growth, eventually close the mismatch between the level of population and the availability of resources, but the latter at a cost of creating misery and wickedness that cannot be avoided and are beyond the control of men. Thomas Malthus foresaw the improvement in human technology. He felt that technology serves only to improve agricultural yields for only a short period of time. It was his belief that this may only encourage a temporary improvement in living standards. However in the future technology will not be able to cater for the increased population size expected should population growth continue unchecked. Malthus suggested another alternative to the above mentioned population checks. Malthus hinted that migration of some members of the population to another location may also temporarily alleviate the consequences of over population.

Unlike some sociological theorist, Thomas Malthus disagreed with the idea of transferring monies/assets from rich to poor individuals. Malthus believed that increasing the welfare of the poor by giving them more money would eventually worsen their living conditions, as they would mistakenly be lead to the believe that they can support a bigger family, which would in turn depress the preventive check and generate higher population growth. At the end of this process, the same amount of resources has to be split between a larger population, triggering the work of the positive check to populations.

Interestingly, Malthus believed that a sudden increase in resources amongst the poor within any given society will immediately the influence an increase in prices up and decreasing real wages, which hurt poor individuals whose main income comes from their labor. For these reasons, Malthus, together with other distinguished economists like David Ricardo, opposed the English poor laws, a piece of legislation that gave relief to poor and unemployed people, and played a central role in their reform in 1834. Interestingly, many Caribbean Countries which was once under the colonial control of Britain have instituted such laws throughout the Caribbean. Malthus held the view that it is better for a family to foresee its lack of ability to support children before having them. Malthus believed that this ideology help to prevent an increase in diseases and infant mortality. Both are associated with preventive population size check than the positive one.

When carefully assessed it could be concluded that real wages within any given society is determined by the market the level of survival is determined by real wages. Real wages refers to wages one use to survive. Thus with real wages population would begin to grow, inducing a decline in nominal wages as a result of firms having a larger supply of labor available. Moreover, the larger population would result in an increase in the demand for goods, which would force prices to go up and real wages to decrease to their subsistence level. This concept was known as the Iron Law of Wages, and, although first conceptually formalized by Ricardo in 1817, it was constantly present in Malthus's work.

Many economists throughout the years are of the view that a decrease in returns suggests that agricultural as well as mining /activities are on the decrease. Economist is also of the view that constant production and returns are likened to manufacturing. This hypothesis, taken together with Malthus' population principle yields even more pessimistic scenarios for countries that base their productive structure on manufacturing. The above describe suggest that agriculture and mining are not as reliable in returns as with manufacturing. One can assume that with an increase in population size comes an increase in the labour force. This labour force is primarily employed within the industrial sector more than it does in the agricultural sector and raises manufacture supply more than it does agricultural supply.

This is a point of concern. This increases the pressure on the population to secure food supply. The available food supply which exists will increase in price when compared to manufactured goods.The in ability of the poor to afford available food resources creates an Impoverish society suffering from the lack of nutrients and encourages an unhealthy population. This perspective had important policy implications for Britain at the beginning of the19th century, especially for the debate on the Corn Laws. The Corn Laws were variable tariffs and export subsidies intended to protect English agriculture. After the Napoleonic wars, agricultural prices fell all over Europe and British landowners demanded more protection. These issues created an enormous debate in Britain between supporters of the Corn Laws and advocates of free trade policies.

Malthus strongly opposed their possible repeal and defended landlords' positions for mainly two reasons. First, he held that the economic system was characterized by an intrinsic lack of demand that could endanger entrepreneurs and that landowners provided the solution for this problem. Their tastes were usually biased towards purchasing luxury goods, keeping aggregate demand at satisfactory levels. Therefore, impoverishing landowners by repealing the Corn Laws would result in a decline in living standards. Second, by specializing in manufacturing, a country would become poorer, because the pressure of population would cause a deterioration in its terms of trade (the ratio of manufacturing prices to agricultural prices), a result of the different production technologies in the two sectors presented above. Malthus’ support for the Corn Laws should not be interpreted as an aversion to the industrial sector. On the contrary, he maintained that the consumption of luxury goods would alleviate the population pressure by increasing the opportunity cost of having an extra child.

Malthus’ ideas have a large impact on the advance of economics, demography and evolutionary biology. Malthus thoughts of how man’s survival can be maintained influenced the biologist, Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Darwin formulate his concepts of the evolution of species starting by the idea of the struggle for survival over scarce resources theorized by Malthus. In Darwin’s perspective, only individuals whose traits were better suited to face the environment would survive and generate a lineage that would last longer. Malthus’ Influence many intellectuals within the field of economics, These scholars include David Ricardo (1772-1823), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), and other classical economists.

Interestingly economists Ricardo and Mill, for instance, both accepted Malthus' theory of population, but believed that free trade could generate high profits for a long period and alleviate the pressure on scarce resources. In the later years of the 19th century, as the predictions of constant real wages and population explosion did not materialize, Malthus's influence decreased. Long term trends in Population and Output Growth from the dawn of history until the time of Malthus, most societies in the world displayed his suggested relationship between population and standards of living. That is, temporary improvements in living standards were offset by population growth, whereas a transitory decline in living standards eventually resulted in a decrease in population size through the operation of the positive check.

Population average annual growth rates were relatively low, but increased from 10,000BC to year 0, and further increased from year 0 to the 1750s. Nevertheless, population growth was not continuous and experienced oscillations, as did living standards. Birth rates increased considerably before the year 0 and remained high, until the industrial revolution. Malthus’ model was a better description of agricultural societies that characterized antiquity and the Middle Ages than it was of the post industrial revolution era. By the 19th century, however, things had begun to change. The modern period saw a substantial decline in fertility rates in industrialized countries, and even though population growth rates increased dramatically to almost 0.6% in 1950 and more than 1.8% in 1990 due to an increase in life expectancy, many countries experienced a dramatic growth in agricultural and industrial production. Living standards improved permanently without a subsequent increase in population growth rates. Malthus’ prediction, which sounded so logical and powerful at the time it was made, was refuted in large parts of the world.

                                                            

                                                                   Neo-Malthusians

Thomas Malthus never foresaw the industrial revolution which occurred during the early years of the 1900’s. For a long period Malthus theory of population transition and control seemed realistic to many economist and sociologist. He got support from several individuals. One such individual was E.A. Wrigley. E.A Wrigley's work supported Malthus’ theory. Both used the situation in Britain to based their assumptions. E.A Wrigley's argued that Britain, before and immediately after the industrial revolution, displayed all the main features of a Malthusian economy, but by the end of the nineteenth century the relationship between population and income was broken.

E.A Wrigley's described British economy before the industrial revolution as “Organic Economic System”, characterized by decreasing returns to scale, where population movements set standards of living to the subsistence level. The use of wood and other organic materials as source of energy in production process tightened decreasing returns and narrowed production possibilities. Wrigley shows that in modern Britain, from 1566 to 1871, prices and population were closely related: when population increased, for instance from 1781 to 1806, the price index also rose. On the other hand, downturns in population correspond to decline in prices. E.A Wrigley points out that fertility rather than mortality was the main determinant of population growth during the eighteenth century, and that nuptiality changes accounted almost entirely for the movements in fertility.

In modern England, weddings were celebrated after a careful economic calculus operated by the potential bride and groom, and therefore constituted the main mechanism relating population size with economic conditions. This Malthusian link between population and economic growth disappeared in the last quarter of the 19th century, when a new socio-economic paradigm was postulated. An increase in production did not lead to a rise in population, as Malthus would have predicted. Instead, individuals began to adopt different forms of birth controls within families, thus reducing birth rates. By the 1930s large families had become a thing of the past in England. Many young couples or young adults put having children off until later in their life ages 35- 40 to have their first child. Many young adults and young couples had only one or two children.

The neo-Malthusian literature also involves comparative studies, checking for Malthusian effects. Of particular interest is the comparison between the English and the French experience. Until 1790, France was characterized by a high-pressure system ( large families seeking assistance from government), where adjustments to the Malthusian equilibrium were operated through the positive check and higher death rates, whereas Britain adjusted through nuptiality and preventive check. This changed with the end of the French Revolution. After the French Revolution, the progressive introduction of birth controls gradually moved France to a low-pressure system. The peculiar feature of this phenomenon is that, while England created a mechanism of adjustment based on number of weddings and nuptiality, France bypassed this procedure and directly arrived to birth controls within families.

David Weir is also among the economists who empirically tested the existence of a Malthusian pressure. Using tax records of Rosny-Sous-Bois, a small village south of Paris, he is able to trace a demographic history of this locality for the year 1747. His findings suggest that Rosny was a classic Malthusian micro-system. In particular, under a Malthusian perspective, age at marriage is expected to fall with rise in income, and mortality rates are predicted to be negatively related with living standards. Indeed Weir finds that, female age at marriage was lower, the higher the income of the husband, and mortality rates of children and adults were negatively related to income.

Regarding the Malthusian comparison between demographic trends in France and England, Weir estimates the elasticity response of birth and death rates to a wheat price shock in France and Britain for the periods 1670-1869. If the neo-Malthusian prediction is correct, we expect a higher response of birth rates to wheat price shocks, in Britain, and a higher reaction of mortality rates in France, as positive enters in action. Weir’s results rejected the Malthusian prediction.

During the second half of the eighteenth century, there is no significant difference between the two countries’ responses of birth rates to price shocks. Even for the period after 1790, in which neo-Malthusians asserted a higher adjustment in France through marital fertility, Weir did not find any important variation from the result obtained for the previous period. In the nineteenth century, the two countries displayed the same demographic behavior, despite the introduction of birth control practices in France. Regarding the positive check and mortality rates after 1740, France seems to be more sensitive to wheat price shock, but the results are less clear. The existence of a consistent positive check is shown in only in one specific simulation ran for the seventy years prior to 1740: in this case a doubling the wheat price in one year yields a much higher response for the French death rate when compared to the English one.

                                                                 Malthus criticized

Several theorists have criticized the assumptions/ postulations of Thomas Malthus theory on population. Thomas Malthus argued convincingly that there is a clear link between population growth and production capacity. When assessed during the time of Malthus his theory on population seems palatable. However based on occurrences from the time of his assumptions until today many assumptions made by Malthus need revisiting. Due to the magnitude of the divergence of the world’s population from the footpaths predicted by Malthus, explanations are needed. Several economists began to look for alternative explanations, attempting to close the gap between Malthus' prediction and the new reality that has been revealed to them. Malthus claimed that with a fixed amount of land and a growing population, diminishing marginal productivity would result in individuals living constantly at a subsistence level. During his period of existence as an economist this rationale seems practical.

With the frequency of variation from this module of Malthus prediction, a frequently heard critique was that he ignored the possibility that technological improvements and capital accumulation are strong enough contenders and may decrease the population pressure and improve the economic and living situation of individuals, even in the presence of a growing population. One kind of criticism emphasized potential positive consequences of population growth in the long run ignored by Malthus. Ester Boserup, for instance, suggested that Malthusians' arguments display a reverse causation. According to her, population growth is an autonomous factor, which affects agricultural productivity rather than being affected by it, as suggested by the Malthusian school.

Boserup claimed that Malthus' assumption of diminishing returns to labor needs not hold in the long run, as higher population may lead to a more efficient division of labor as well as to improved agricultural practices (signaled by the frequency of cropping). She concluded that soil fertility should not be viewed as fixed and given by nature, but instead can be improved by substituting the agricultural technology to a better one, which is likely to be a result of an increase in population. Primitive communities with higher population growth rates are more likely to experience economic development, provided that the necessary investment in agriculture in undertaken.

Julian L. Simon is another critic of the Malthusian reasoning, emphasizing the long run benefits of population growth. Simon claims that whereas population growth has a negative effect on living standards in the short run due to diminishing returns and the temporary burden it poses on society, it has positive effects on living standards in the long run due to knowledge advances and economies of scale. Employing a simulation model, Simon finds that in the long run (after 30 to 100 years) and when compared to constant-size population, moderate population growth improves standards of livings both in more developed and in less developed countries. Simon held that, in the long run, a growing population tends to advance knowledge, which, in turn, increases productivity and output at a higher rate than that of population growth. Nevertheless, he claimed that a country's optimal policy regarding population growth depends on the weight given to future periods relative to the present. The more weight a country gives to future generations and the more willing a country is for the short run decline in standards of livings, the better it is for that country to pursue a policy of moderate population growth.

The second kind of criticism stressed the importance of fertility decisions made by parents that were overlooked by Malthus. This view was developed after three interesting regularities were observed. First, it was found that in the modern era, the population of poor countries grew faster than that of rich ones. Low-income countries experienced annual population growth rates of more than 2% between 1965 and 1990, whereas high-income countries grew at a rate of less than 1% or less than 50% of the above mentioned, in the same period. Second, fertility rates are negatively correlated with income per capita, and third, life expectancy at birth is much higher for countries with higher income per capita.

Motivated by these observations, economists raised the possibility that the number of children and the investment made in each child are economic decisions taken consciously by parents. Gary S. Becker and Gregg H. Lewis were the first to formalize the idea that parents may be altruistic towards their children and when making fertility decisions, they will take into account both the number of children and the quality of each of them that is reflected in his consumption, education, health to name a few. They show that when altruism is present, the Malthusian prediction doesn't hold and higher living standards are consistent with lower fertility rates, as observed in the data. Becker, Kevin M. Murphy and Robert F. Tamura pointed out that Malthus' analysis is not suited to the modern era, as it ignores the importance of education and the higher cost of raising children in industrialized countries, a result of the higher value of time in such countries. These two factors induce parents in rich countries to invest in their children's quality rather than in their quantity, which can account for lower fertility rates than the ones suggested by Malthus.

Oded Galor and Omer Moav advance a new view of the Malthusian Era. The long period of output stagnation and population pressure stimulated a Darwinian pressure, which brought about qualitative changes in the composition of human species that eventually allowed some economies to experience sustained growth in income per capita. Galor, together with David N. Weil, further analyze the relationship between population growth, technological change and living standards, and find that population growth gradually improved technology, which in turn increased investment in human capital, inducing households to substitute quality for quantity children. At the end of this process, fertility rates are permanently lower and standards of living improve. This view implies that the Malthusian era was a necessary stage in order to reach sustained economic growth.

In spite of all of the above critiques, Malthus’ theory still applies to many poor countries that are still struggling to get out of the Malthusian cycle. Even among richer countries, a Neo-Malthusian relationship between population growth and the environment has been argued for, based on the idea of the overuse of scarce natural resources. But this problem, too, is more severe in poor countries, which usually depend more on their natural resources.

                                                                      References

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