An Essay on the Principle of Population - Thomas Malthus
Context and summary
“An Essay On The Principle Of Population, As It Affects The Future Improvement Of Society With Remarks On The Speculations Of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, And Other Writers.”
Malthus’s Essay was published in 1798 in response to contemporary ideas regarding population growth, economic progress, and, specifically, the writings of William Godwin and Marquis de Condorcet [1]. It is a wide-ranging analysis of ideas, but is best known for Malthus’s arguments regarding factors that limit population growth in human societies. In his History of Economics, Roger Backhouse writes that Godwin and Condorcet were the most prominent advocates of the view that private property was an obstacle to economic equality, and that the term ‘Malthusian’ had become a ‘term of abuse’ during Malthus’s lifetime, indicating a pessimistic view of the prospects for economic and material progress.
The Essay’s arguments remain relevant today. This is especially clear in Malthus’s attacks against what he perceived as Utopian views of ‘progress’ that describe unachievable ideals and undermine key pillars of social, political, and economic organisation. He argued that such ideas are not based in reality, but founded only in imagination and wishful thinking. Mathus sees himself as assessing reality and human beings as they are, not how they might someday be. A similar debate continues today between modern ‘conservatives’ and ‘progressives’. On this seemingly fundamental divide, or perhaps stalemate, Malthus wrote:
“The advocate for the present order of things is apt to treat the sect of speculative philosophers either as a set of artful and designing knaves who preach up ardent benevolence and draw captivating pictures of a happier state of society only the better to enable them to destroy the present establishments and to forward their own deep-laid schemes of ambition, or as wild and mad-headed enthusiasts whose silly speculations and absurd paradoxes are not worthy the attention of any reasonable man.
The advocate for the perfectibility of man, and of society, retorts on the defender of establishments a more than equal contempt. He brands him as the slave of the most miserable and narrow prejudices; or as the defender of the abuses of civil society only because he profits by them. He paints him either as a character who prostitutes his understanding to his interest, or as one whose powers of mind are not of a size to grasp any thing great and noble, who cannot see above five yards before him, and who must therefore be utterly unable to take in the views of the enlightened benefactor of mankind. In this unamicable contest the cause of truth cannot but suffer. The really good arguments on each side of the question are not allowed to have their proper weight. Each pursues his own theory, little solicitous to correct or improve it by an attention to what is advanced by his opponents.”
Key ideas
Population growth and the ‘zero-sum game’
Food supply is a finite resource and, given that rates of population and resource growth differ, an increase in population would result in the same or similar means of subsistence being distributed over a larger population, making people poorer. This is primarily because population increases geometrically (1,2,4,8,16…), while food production increases arithmetically (1,2,3,4,5…). Population growth is always limited, or checked, by the provision of resources. Such checks are either positive (increase in deaths from causes such as war and famine) or negative (prevention of births from causes such as moral restraint and delayed marriage). Things naturally revert to a kind of equilibrium between the supply and demand for resources: for example, an increase in population would depress wages until birth rates among the working classes fell. Malthus argues that because of the finite nature of the food supply, we will observe a ‘zero-sum game’: one person’s gains are offset, or balanced, by another’s loss; both cannot gain, or win, under a stated set of conditions; the gains and losses sum to zero. He writes:
“…increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. The food therefore which before supported seven millions must now be divided among seven millions and a half or eight millions. The poor consequently must live much worse, and many of them be reduced to severe distress. The number of labourers also being above the proportion of the work in the market, the price of labour must tend toward a decrease, while the price of provisions would at the same time tend to rise. The labourer therefore must work harder to earn the same as he did before…It is a demonstrative truth, therefore, that the patents of one set of men could not be increased in value without diminishing the value of the patents of some other set of men…An increase of population without a proportional increase of food will evidently have the same effect in lowering the value of each man's patent. The food must necessarily be distributed in smaller quantities, and consequently a day's labour will purchase a smaller quantity of provisions.”
Progress and idealism versus realism (or pessimism versus optimism)
“It has been said that the great question is now at issue, whether man shall henceforth start forwards with accelerated velocity towards illimitable, and hitherto unconceived improvement, or be condemned to a perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery, and after every effort remain still at an immeasurable distance from the wished-for goal.” (Malthus 1798)
It is difficult to look at many aspects of the human condition and not hope for progress; economic or otherwise. Malthus’s essay is controversial because it challenges beliefs regarding the extent to which things can improve. It is understandable that for those more familiar with - or empathetic to - human suffering, accepting limits to ‘progress’ might be demoralising. Godwin and Condorcet, among others, held a more optimistic view of the prospect for improving the living conditions among the poor, in particular, but Malthus believed that an idealistic belief (sometimes closer to hope, or even faith) in progress that cannot be achieved is an obstacle to real progress; that which is possible:
“If the progress were really unlimited it might be increased ad infinitum, but this is so gross an absurdity that we may be quite sure that among plants as well as among animals there is a limit to improvement, though we do not exactly know where it is… In all these cases therefore, a careful distinction should be made, between an unlimited progress, and a progress where the limit is merely undefined.”
Malthus’s attack on what he believes are unsupported notions of progress at times becomes polemic:
“The present rage for wide and unrestrained speculation seems to be a kind of mental intoxication, arising, perhaps, from the great and unexpected discoveries which have been made of late years, in various branches of science. To men elate and giddy with such successes, every thing appeared to be within the grasp of human powers; and, under this illusion, they confounded subjects where no real progress could be proved with those where the progress had been marked, certain, and acknowledged. Could they be persuaded to sober themselves with a little severe and chastised thinking, they would see, that the cause of truth, and of sound philosophy, cannot but suffer by substituting wild flights and unsupported assertions for patient investigation, and well authenticated proofs.”
Malthus concedes that all desire the improvement of human existence, but regards the ‘experiments’ proposed by men like Godwin to be a risk to societal structures and bonds which are highly fragile:
“No person can deny the importance of improving the happiness of the human species. Every the least advance in this respect is highly valuable. But an experiment with the human race is not like an experiment upon inanimate objects. The bursting of a flower may be a trifle. Another will soon succeed it. But the bursting of the bonds of society is such a separation of parts as cannot take place without giving the most acute pain to thousands: and a long time may elapse, and much misery may be endured, before the wound grows up again.”
“It has been frequently observed that though we cannot hope to reach perfection in any thing, yet that it must always be advantageous to us to place before our eyes the most perfect models. This observation has a plausible appearance, but is very far from being generally true.”
“Mr Godwin seems to have but little respect for practical principles; but I own it appears to me, that he is a much greater benefactor to mankind, who points out how an inferior good may be attained, than he who merely expatiates on the deformity of the present state of society, and the beauty of a different state, without pointing out a practical method, that might be immediately applied, of accelerating our advances from the one, to the other.”
Benevolence and economic welfare
An ongoing debate during the Enlightenment period and beyond has been identifying the true source of human motivation, whether arising from ‘self-love’ or benevolence (see our article on the concept of Homo Economicus). A society and economy which assumes people primarily act selfishly tends to create structures that restrict greater cooperation and encourage individualism. Thomas Hobbes famously wrote of self-interest, or self-preservation, as the fundamental human drive, and Malthus seems to agree:
“The substitution of benevolence as the master-spring and moving principle of society, instead of self-love, is a consummation devoutly to be wished…we awaken to real life and contemplate the true and genuine situation of man on earth.”
Malthus criticises Godwin for “attributing almost all the vices and misery that are seen in civil society to human institutions”. The most pernicious of these institutions, for Godwin, is private property, which Malthus regards an inevitable and necessary. The implication is that radical change in institutions can, ultimately, reduce or eliminate human suffering. From Godwin’s essay:
“The spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the spirit of fraud, these are the immediate growth of the established administration of property. They are alike hostile to intellectual improvement. The other vices of envy, malice, and revenge are their inseparable companions. In a state of society where men lived in the midst of plenty and where all shared alike the bounties of nature, these sentiments would inevitably expire. The narrow principle of selfishness would vanish. No man being obliged to guard his little store or provide with anxiety and pain for his restless wants, each would lose his individual existence in the thought of the general good. No man would be an enemy to his neighbour, for they would have no subject of contention, and, of consequence, philanthropy would resume the empire which reason assigns her.”
Malthus’s analysis of the ‘present state of things’ - an industrialised society, private property, and centralised authority - leads him to advocate for lesser evils; that is, a worker’s degree of honourable independence from the rich instead of outright reliance:
“The rich man would feel his power and the poor man his dependence, and the evil effects of these two impressions on the human heart are well known. Though I perfectly agree with Mr Godwin therefore in the evil of hard labour, yet I still think it a less evil, and less calculated to debase the human mind, than dependence, and every history of man that we have ever read places in a strong point of view the danger to which that mind is exposed which is entrusted with constant power…In the present state of things, and particularly when labour is in request, the man who does a day's work for me confers full as great an obligation upon me as I do upon him. I possess what he wants, he possesses what I want. We make an amicable exchange. The poor man walks erect in conscious independence; and the mind of his employer is not vitiated by a sense of power.”
Malthus discusses the ‘Poor Laws’ (a form of social welfare in Britain at the time) as an example of social welfare and its detrimental effects, on balance. He describes how such welfare can promote an increase in poor populations without a corresponding increase in resources, resulting in a decline in living standards and an increase in dependence. He argues that the working man would not be motivated to work “without the goad of necessity”, and that the necessity is a “spur to industry” to the “idle and negligent”, though he agrees with Condorcet that such working men are ‘necessary to every state’. This assessment of the economic usefulness of men who are seen as means to material ends might have seemed callous to his critics, but would not be out of place today; human value is still often equated with economic value. He is likely correct that most men, given the choice, would opt to remain idle, or work for the benefit of their families, friends, and community, before a system from which they derive limited benefits compared to the class Malthus calls the ‘proprietors’.
Malthus’s arguments on social welfare had real-world effects, influencing the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which provided incentives for the able-bodied to work, and also reduced relief spending:
“The poor laws of England were undoubtedly instituted for the most benevolent purpose, but there is great reason to think that they have not succeeded in their intention. They certainly mitigate some cases of very severe distress which might otherwise occur, yet the state of the poor who are supported by parishes, considered in all its circumstances, is very far from being free from misery. But one of the principal objections to them…the whole class of the common people of England is subjected to a set of grating, inconvenient, and tyrannical laws, totally inconsistent with the genuine spirit of the constitution...but any great interference with the affairs of other people is a species of tyranny, and in the common course of things the exercise of this power may be expected to become grating to those who are driven to ask for support…the fault does not lie so much in these persons…but in the nature of all such institutions…Mr Pitt's Poor Bill has the appearance of being framed with benevolent intentions…But it must be confessed that it possesses in a high degree the great and radical defect of all systems of the kind, that of tending to increase population without increasing the means for its support, and…to create more poor.” (Malthus, 1798)
Private property
Malthus writes that private property and marriage are inevitable in any society, given human nature and the reality of our struggle for survival. He also argues that inequality (a goal of Godwin and fellow advocates of progress) is an unavoidable result of the way society must be organised:
“When these two fundamental laws of society, the security of property, and the institution of marriage, were once established, inequality of conditions must necessarily follow. Those who were born after the division of property would come into a world already possessed. If their parents, from having too large a family, could not give them sufficient for their support, what are they to do in a world where everything is appropriated?...And thus it appears, that a society constituted according to the most beautiful form that imagination can conceive, with benevolence for its moving principle, instead of self-love…would, from the inevitable laws of nature, and not from any original depravity of man, in a very short period degenerate into a society constructed upon a plan not essentially different from that which prevails in every known state at present; I mean, a society divided into a class of proprietors, and a class of labourers, and with self-love the main-spring of the great machine.”
Idealism in God rather than materialism
Malthus’s broader philosophy on life is also touched upon in his Essay. He writes of life as being a test, or trial, and evil as a necessary cause of good. Evil and want are spurs to man’s industry and lead to improvement in the human condition; they serve a purpose. But he believes we should strive to imitate the perfection of God in anticipation of judgement and the next life, not merely for the perfection of man through material means on Earth:
“It is an idea that will be found consistent, equally with the natural phenomena around us, with the various events of human life, and with the successive revelations of God to man, to suppose that the world is a mighty process for the creation and formation of mind. Many vessels will necessarily come out of this great furnace in wrong shapes. These will be broken and thrown aside as useless; while those vessels whose forms are full of truth, grace, and loveliness, will be wafted into happier situations, nearer the presence of the mighty maker.”
Was Malthus right (or wrong temporarily)?
“It is, undoubtedly, a most disheartening reflection that the great obstacle in the way to any extraordinary improvement in society is of a nature that we can never hope to overcome. The perpetual tendency in the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one of the general laws of animated nature which we can have no reason to expect will change.” (Malthus, 1798).
The modern popular consensus is that Malthus has been proven wrong, at least temporarily, by the rise of a complex, interdependent industrialised economy which, in part of the world at least, has improved agricultural productivity beyond what he could have predicted. Progress has prevailed, the earth now supports far more people than at any other time in history, and there is unlimited scope for the perfectibility of man, as Godwin, Condorcet, and others have suggested. An article published by the UN cites projections that global population will peak at 10.3 billion by mid-2080 and gradually decline thereafter (UN 2024).
There is still, however, an intractable antagonism between the ‘advocate for the perfectibility of man’ and the ‘Malthusian’, though either can be correct under certain conditions. Given the successes of modern science (and the economic system that harnesses labour in its service), it is reasonable for the modern person to have adopted the ‘someone will think of something’ position as opposed to the ‘what if things go wrong because they inevitably do’ view because someone invariably has, and we can - for now - indulge in some complacency regarding the future. But for some, the Malthusian voice in the back of their minds reminds them that our faith in the unlimited possibilities of technological progress has, in a manner of speaking, allowed us to navigate up the creek without a paddle; we are now unable to easily revert to a simpler time of greater self-sufficiency and localisation.
A review of historical events that illustrate the harsh realities alluded to by Malthus might persuade us to adopt a balanced, cautious optimism regarding the prospects for societal and economic progress. Some of these examples, cited in favour of Malthus’s arguments, are: the Irish Potato Famine of 1845 to 1852; the 1943 Bengal famine; the 1876 to 1879 North China famine; population pressures in sub-Saharan Africa; Singapore’s 1966 “Stop at Two” campaign; and the population growth in England after its Agricultural Revolution which outstripped the increase in food production. And we can all attest to recent and personal experience of living through the disruption of supply chains caused by pandemic, observing the destruction of energy supplies and reduction of exports of vital fertilisers due to sabotage and war, and learning of responses to climate change, including ‘the energy transition’. According to the World Bank, “Global food insecurity had already been rising, due in large part to climate phenomena” (World Bank Group 2022).
In the West, the types of preventative checks on population growth described by Malthus are known and documented. These include women’s access to birth control, contraception, and increased participation in the labour force, as well as ‘changes in social norms’ (Roser 2014). These Malthusian interventions that decrease populations are more than offset, however, by the increase from large-scale immigration from cultures with higher birth rates.
“By 2054, immigration will be the main driver of population growth in 52 countries, including Australia, Canada, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States of America.” (UN 2024).
Other countries and regions face concerns about population pressures in currently-developing situations that might have alarmed Malthus. According to the UN, sub-Saharan Africa will see a 79% increase in population to 2.2 billion by 2054 (UN 2024). This, despite Africa continuing to suffer from food insecurity and most of its nations being net food importers (David 2025). An article published by the World Bank states: “About 80% of the global population most at risk from crop failures and hunger from climate change are in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia” (World Bank Group 2022). The continued absorption of the excess population from high birth-rate countries by Western countries might provide some relief to rising populations and increased resource demands, though there is some reason to believe that Malthus’s scepticism of unlimited progress is justified.
Both sides of the argument continue to be made, including a prominent example of the Malthusian case - warning of excessive population growth and resources shortages - in The Limits to Growth, published by the Club of Rome in 1972. Global organisations such as the World Bank and UN warn against complacency regarding food shortages and the impact of climate change. The idea that the rapid population seen over the recent past is unsustainable seems more common, though we in the West are yet to experience the impacts in terms of resource shortages.
[1] Godwin and Condorcet were part of a popular movement advocating for social and economic progress during the time of the French Revolution. Condorcet played a role in the Revolution before he was killed after some of its factions turned against him.
Reference list
Backhouse, R, The Penguin History of Economics, page 3 and Chapter 7.
Gaudiaut, T, Statista, Where Food Accounts for a Large Slice of Imports, https://www.statista.com/chart/36083/share-of-food-imports-in-total-merchandise-imports-by-country-map/
Luke, David, How Africa eats: identifying and stopping the hunger crisis,
Roser, Max, The global decline of the fertility rate, 2014,
United Nations, Global Issues: Population,
United Nations, World Population Prospects 2024, 2024,
World Bank Group, What You Need to Know About Food Security and Climate Change,
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