View source for Malthus, Thomas Robert


{| class="wikitable"
!Copyright notice <!-- don't remove! --> 
|-
| This article ''Thomas Robert Malthus'' was adapted from an original article by Ian Castles, which appeared in ''StatProb: The Encyclopedia Sponsored by Statistics and Probability Societies''. The original article ([<nowiki>http://statprob.com/encyclopedia/ThomasRobertMALTHUS.html</nowiki> StatProb Source], Local Files: [[Media:ThomasRobertMALTHUS.pdf|pdf]] | [[Media:ThomasRobertMALTHUS.tex|tex]]) is copyrighted by the author(s), the article has been donated to ''Encyclopedia of Mathematics'', and its further issues are under ''Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License'. All pages from StatProb are contained in the [[:Category:Statprob|Category StatProb]].
|-
|}

<!-- \documentclass[12pt]{article} 
     \begin{document} 
     \noindent -->
'''Thomas Robert MALTHUS'''

b. 14 February 1766 - d. 23 December 1834

<!-- \noindent -->
'''Summary.''' Malthus was a pivotal figure in the development of 
the empirical study of
human populations as a field of intellectual investigation.

T R Malthus, English economist, statistician and demographer, was born
at Guilford, Surrey. His father was a prosperous country gentleman
with intellectual interests, who was a friend and admirer of both
David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Under the influence of Rousseau's
''Emile'', the father arranged for Malthus and his brother to be
educated at various private schools. At the age of 18, Robert Malthus 
entered Jesus College  Cambridge, where he was elected a fellow in 1797. 
Malthus is best 
known for his ''Essay on the Principle of Population'', the central theme of 
which was 
that there was an inherent tendency for human numbers to `outstrip the means of 
subsistence', and that human improvement therefore 
depended on stern limits on reproduction. The original essay, published 
anonymously in 1798, was 
directed against the optimistic speculations of certain utopian writers who 
could see no limit to 
human progress. It brought Malthus immediate fame, but also notoriety among 
those who believed 
that the young clergyman's doctrine amounted to a questioning of divine 
providence. In ''Essays 
In Biography'' (1933), the British economist John Maynard Keynes (q.v.) was to write 
of this pamphlet that 
<blockquote>
The voice of objective reason had been raised against a deep instinct which the 
evolutionary 
struggle had been implanting from the commencement of life; and man's mind, in 
the conscious 
pursuit of happiness, was daring to demand the reins of government from out 
of the hands of the 
unconscious urge for mere predominant survival.
</blockquote>

There were not many statistics in the first book, though Malthus did draw upon 
the estimates 
of the numbers of births and deaths which had been made or quoted during the 
preceding century 
by his countrymen Gregory King, Thomas Short and Richard Price. Perhaps because 
of the stir which 
his book created, Malthus immediately settled down to a thorough examination of 
all of the 
available information bearing upon the principle which he had enunciated. The 
result, published 
in 1803 in Malthus' own name, was a book of nearly four times the length of the 
original essay. 
In ''The Economics of Industry'' (1896), another British economist, Alfred 
Marshall, 
was to rate this 
book as `one of the most crushing answers that patient and hard-working science 
has ever given to 
the reckless assertions of its adversaries'. 

In 1805 Malthus was appointed professor of history and political economy at the 
new East India 
College, a chair which he was to occupy until his death almost thirty years 
later. 
In addition 
to producing important works in political economy, the originality of which 
came to be increasingly 
recognised in the twentieth century, Malthus continued to refine his study 
of the principle of 
population in further editions of the ''Essay'', including in appendices to 
the 1806 and 1817 editions 
in which he sought `to correct some of the misrepresentations which have gone 
abroad respecting 
two or three of the most important points of the ''Essay'''.  

Increasingly, Malthus' ''Essay'' became an empirical and statistical work. In 
a recent assessment 
in ''The Rise of Political Economy as a Science'' (1997), Deborah Redman 
notes that Malthus 
`culled evidence from every region in the world, every period of history, 
and every stage in 
society', and that he 'was familiar with the life expectancy tables of Euler, 
Barton, Sussmilch (q.v.), 
Milne and others'. Redman recognises, however, that Malthus' use of 
statistics was not always above criticism.   

The most succinct statement of Malthus' mature views on population issues 
appeared in his article 
on `Population' in the 1824 Supplement  to the ''Encyclopaedia Brittanica'',  
which was issued separately 
in 1830, with a few amendments, as ''A Summary View of the Principle of 
Population''.  
In this work, 
Malthus makes extensive use of population, vital statistics and baptism and 
burial records relating 
to the United States, Latin America and a number of European countries. 

In his declining years, Malthus was active in the promotion of statistics as 
a profession and as a 
discipline. On 27 June 1833, in the course of a meeting of the British 
Association for the 
Advancement of Science at Cambridge, he took the chair at a meeting of eight 
`Gentlemen desirous 
of forming a Statistical Section of the... Association'. He was also a 
founding member of the 
(London) Royal Society of Statistics in the following year. In Population 
Malthus  (1979), Malthus' 
biographer, Patricia James, records that his `pursuit of accurate 
statistics and their correct 
interpretation [were]... among the intellectual passions in his life'.

Malthus married in 1804. His family life seems to have been extremely
happy. The Malthuses had three children, of whom the younger daughter,
to their great grief, died in 1825 at age 17. Malthus died on 23 December 1834,
while on a visit to his wife's family in Bath. His
last words on the subject of population survive in a letter of 
thanks to an unknown 
Jacqueline. Writing three months before his death to a young lady who had 
apparently spoken up 
in his defence, Britain's first professor of political economy said that he was 
glad that she 
had vindicated him `against the accusation of massacring children', and urged 
her to point out 
that `I have specifically proposed as the best criterion of the happiness and 
good government 
of a country the number of the children born who arrive at the age of puberty.'

In his introduction to the eight-volume edition of the collected works (1986), 
the English 
historical demographer E A Wrigley recognised Malthus' seminal contribution to 
population studies:
<blockquote>
... Malthus bestowed life on population studies as a field of intellectual 
investigation by 
showing how strategic to the understanding of the functioning of society a 
knowledge of its 
demography might be.... His range of interests was so catholic and his 
penetration so acute 
that few social scientists today, as yesterday, should fail to be stimulated 
by reading his works.   
</blockquote> 

Recently, Caldwell (1998) argues that Malthus, whether right or wrong, has been very
influential, in the later 20th Century, on the policies which have been
adopted by the developing world.


====References====
{|
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|1}}||valign="top"|   Caldwell, J.C. (1998). Malthus and the less developed world: the pivotal role of India. ''Population and Development Review'', '''24''', 675-696. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|2}}||valign="top"|   Castles, Ian (1998). From the Desk of Malthus: How the population  debate began, '' National  Library of Australia News'', September, pp. 3-6.  
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|3}}||valign="top"|   Flew, Antony (1970). Introduction to  Malthus, T R, ''An Essay on the Principle of Population and A Summary View  of the Principle of  Population'', Penguin, Harmondsworth.  
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|4}}||valign="top"|   Keynes, J.M. (1963). Robert Malthus: the first of the Cambridge  economists. In  ''Essays in Biography'', Norton, New York.  
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|5}}||valign="top"|   Redman, Deborah A. (1997). ''The Rise of Political Economy as a  Science: Methodology and the Classical Economists''. MIT Press, Cambridge MA, pp. 259-320.  
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|6}}||valign="top"|   Wrigley, E.A. (1986). `Introduction' to Wrigley, E A and David  Souden, eds,  ''The Works of Thomas Robert Malthus''. W. Pickering, London,   Vol. 1, pp. 38-9.
|-
|}


I. Castles

<!-- \end{document} -->


<references />

[[Category:Statprob]]
[[Category:Biographical]]