Malthusian Dilemma

1. Malthusian Dilemma Dmitry Pobedash Ural State University

2. The Population Challenge • Until 17th century – 0.002 percent annually • Next 300 years – fivefold, from about 500 million in 1650 to about 2.5 billion in 1950 • From 1950 to 2000 – from about 2.5 billion to more than 6 billion

3. Thomas RobertMalthus(1766-1834) Born near Guildford, Surrey, educated at Jesus College, the University of Cambridge. Became curate of the parish of Albury in Surrey in 1798. From 1805 until his death- professor of political economy and mo-dern history at the college of the East India Company at Haileybury. The Father of Demography

4. A Summary View of the Principle of Population …if the natural increase of population, when unchecked by the difficulty of procuring the means of subsistence, or other peculiar causes, be such as to continue doub-ling its numbers in twenty-five years; and the greatest increase of food, which, for a continuance, could possib-ly take place on a limited territory like our earth in its pre-sent state, he at the most only such as would add every twenty-five years an amount equal to its present produ-ce; it is, quite clear that a powerful check on the increase of population must be almost constantly in action.

5. The Principle of Population • Population cannot increase without the means of subsistence • Population invariably increases when the means of subsistence are available • 'the superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice'

7. Growth and the Checks Growth dilemma – the contrast between the geometric power of population increase and the arithmetic power of improvements in food production • Positive checks – higher mortality rates and lower life expectancy • Preventive checks – voluntary restraint on birth-rates

8. Main Positive Checks • War • Pestilence • Famine

9. Main Preventive Checks • Abortion • Infanticide • Prostitution • ‘other unnatural attempts to accommodate the constant passion between the sexes while avoiding the consequences’

10. Neo-Malthusian Checks • Preventive – lower birth rates • Sterilization, castration, celibacy, restraint, late marriage, contraception, “abnormal” sex practices, abortion • Destructive – raise death rates • Infanticide, infant diseases, crime, capital punishment, wars and feuds other than over food shortage, diseases other than due to undernourishment • Subsistence – raise death rates

11. Malthusian ‘Reality’ • periods of good times associated with high wages leading to early marriage and population increase, followed by bad times in which distress brings population increase to a halt • 'perpetual oscillation [fluctuation]' rather than unilinear progress

12. Marxist Critique • Malthusian scenario resulted from capitalism’s tendency to concentrate wealth and resources in the hands of the few • Socialist model would distribute resources evenly, could support an indefinite number of people BUT! China instituted a one-child family policy

13. Fertility Decline • The availability and awareness of contraception • Improved literacy rates • Reduced infant mortality • Better economic prospects

14. AND! The transition to lower fertility rates is enhanced by affording women the same educational, political, and eco-nomic opportunities available to men

15. A Slow-Down with Development

16. BUT! • Only about 30 countries at stage 3 • Most at stage 2 • Situation unacceptable for humanitarian reasons at stage 1

17. Neo-Malthusianism John Orme, The Utility of Force in a World of Scarcity As world population young, “even if replacement fertility were achieved immediately, the expansion would not cease until 2050”. Replacement levels are not expected in India until 2030 and in Africa until 2050 By 2025 Latin America will be 85 per cent urban, Africa will have urban majority

18. Limits of Food Production • Oceans – if more fish were removed than at present, stocks and future catches’d fall • Cultivated lands peaked in 1981, since then have fallen 8.5 percent • Fertilization declining since 1989 • Irrigation peaked in 1978, has declined 6% • Agricultural yields growth is less than 1/3 of population growth

19. Water Shortage • Global water utilization has tripled since 1950 • China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Libya withdraw water faster than it’s replenished • US farmers exhaust aquifers under the Great Plains and the Central Valley of Ca.

20. Consumption • At US level of consumption the world can sustain 2 billion people • 10 billion (UN moderate assessment by 2050) can barely survive – 1,500 calories daily per capita

21. Conflict of Interests “Persuading the Chinese and other long-impoverished peoples to curtail their indus-trial development while North Americans, Europeans, and Japanese continue to enjoy their accustomed standard of living will be no easy task”.

22. Future? RMA and spread of industrialization to the developing nations + Malthusian Dilemma = Hobbesian World => Utility of Force

23. Alternative? Spread of industrialization and further advance in science and technology (+RMA) + Enhancement of educational, political, and economic opportunities for women + Growing interdependence and glocalization = Futility rather than Utility of Force