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Dinesh club

Posted: 04 Mar 2021

Taken: 04 Mar 2021

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Farewell to Alms •
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Gregory Clark •
Malthus •

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Figure 2.7

Figure 2.7
The Church of Okewood, where Malthus en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism as a curate with working on his essay. Malthus probably lived at his father’s house in nearby Albury, whose population of 510 in 1801 had grown to 929 in 1831

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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
There was growth in the medieval period from 1200 to 1316; at six million, the population in 1316 was as great as in the early eighteenth century. But the arrival from Asia of the bubonic plague (the so called ‘Black Death’ in 1348 caused a long period of population decline from then to the 1450s. by then England had barely two million people. People grew again from 1540 to 1640 as the plague loosened is hold. From 1200 to 1650, as population changed under the influence of disease shocks, the income-population points lie along one downward sloping line. This implies a completely stagnant production of technology for 450 years. After 1650 the implied technology curve shifts upward, but not fast enough to cause significant increases in output per person. In particular the later eighteenth century all technological advance created only a larger population without generating any income gains. Before 1800 the rate of technological advance in all economies was so low that incomes could not escape the Malthusian equilibrium. ~ Page 30

. . . . Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) and David Ricardo (1772-1823) who first formulated the Malthusian model and the associated economic doctrines now called classical economics, thought in terms of the wages of unskilled workers. Thus Ricardo, using similar logic, argued that real wages (as opposed to income per person, which includes land rent and returns on capital) must always eventually return to the subsistence level. Ricardo's proposition later became known as the 'Iron Law of Wages.' Classical economics thus denied the possibility of other than transitory improvements in the living standards of unskilled workers. All the above reasoning about birth rates, death rates, population, and incomes can be carried out equivalently in terms of wages. ~ Page 31

The population explosion seems completely unrelated to the productivity gains in textiles, steam, iron, and agriculture that characterized the Industrial Revolution. For a start, the growth in population was well under way before there were significant productivity gains in any sector. By the 1790s population was already 37 percent higher than in the 1740s. That was why Malthus, writing in 1790s, saw only a problem of excess o=population, not one of population growth driven by economic changes. Since mortality declined little in the era of the Industrial Revolution, most of the increase in population came from fertility increases. ~ Page 243
4 years ago. Edited 4 years ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
A Farewell to Alms
4 years ago.

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