MALTHUSIAN MOMENTS: INTRODUCTION

Malthusian stagnation or Malthusian regeneration?

Empirical evidence questions fundamental concepts of the human population dynamics. One of the key conclusions of this study is that positive checks activate the efficient Malthusian regeneration mechanism, suggesting that the Epoch of Malthusian Stagnation, the first stage of growth claimed by the Demographic Transition Theory, did not exist.

Malthusian and Neo-Malthusian Theories/

The Malthusian theory.

These two quotations have appeared in recent medical literature. We have never seen a reference to Malthus in any of the current literature of the day, either lay or medical, which did not clearly show that the writer believed that the “Malthusian idea” is to destroy the fruitfulness of the marital relation, and which did not convict him of having never read one word of the writings of Malthus....

Urbanization, Health and Income in Malthusian Europe

A Farewell to Alms argued that pre-industrial England in particular, and Europe in general, had a distinctive demographic regime, “survival of the richest.” In this regime the wealthy and the educated produced many more surviving children than the poor. Consequently there must have been substantial downward mobility. This provided a dynamic favoring the culture, and perhaps even the genes, of t...

Dynamics and Stagnation in the Malthusian Epoch.

This paper examines the central hypothesis of the influential Malthusian theory, according to which improvements in the technological environment during the pre-industrial era had generated only temporary gains in income per capita, eventually leading to a larger, but not significantly richer, population. Exploiting exogenous sources of cross-country variations in land productivity and the leve...