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Malthus Theory And The Earth's Theory Of Overpopulation

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The Earth’s population is growing rapidly leading to a state where human population exceeds the Earth’s carrying capacity. Thomas Robert Malthus was the first economist to start the theory of population and the idea of overpopulation. He wrote his views and explanation about population and its consequences in his essay on “Principles of Population” which was published in 1798. The book explained the relationship between food and population, and their growth patterns. His views on the theory of overpopulation and its impact influenced many political economists and earned economics the label of the “dismissal science”. Malthus was concerned by the condition of poverty in the British cities during his time and the increase of population in the industrializing societies. The main idea of Malthus theory was to maintain balance between the population growth and the food for human existence, as the human population tends to grow quicker than the power in the earth to produce subsistence.
Malthus was the first economists to present the views and ideas on the matter of population growth and its effect on food and the surroundings. According to Malthus Theory, human population grows exponentially at a geometric rate i.e. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and so on, doubling the number at each time period, whereas food production grow in much slower rate than the population, which grows at an arithmetic rate i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on. Thus, Malthus shows that population grows much faster than the

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