Essay On The Principle Of Population Growth

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Thomas Malthus in his paper An Essay on the Principle of Population suggest that population and economy is related. While population exponentially increases, food production only increase arithmetically. Moreover, as the economy grows, the population would also increase until a point where the economy cannot supply the whole population. It's at this point when factors such as preventive checks, or positive checks kick in to reduce the population back to the equilibrium where the economy can supply the population. However, Malthus's conclusion that growth is hindered by population can be considered wrong if we look at history and economic history of the world where there are situations where population increase brings upon changes in productivity …show more content…

This can be answered by examining the transition of the economic and social system of the country into what called modern economic growth. In their analysis of Britain economy during the Industrial Revolution, Shin Haing Kim and Donghyu Yang (2014) examined the effect of population increase on the economy. In their article, the authors explain that population increase lead to increases in demand, thus created large-scale economies, which fits with Boserup’s theory. Moreover, based on Lewis model, Kim and Yand shows that large-scale economies means more labor is required for the manufacturing sector. At the same time, thanks to the high relative productivity of the manufacturing sector, it was able to attract more labor, thus created a migration from agricultural sectors to manufacturing sector. This shifts is characterised by history urbanisation in Enaland. The graph by Allen (2009) provides us information about this shift from rural to urban in England between 1500 and 1800. If the percentage of urban, non-agricultural rural, and rural population in 1500 England was 7%, 18% and 74% respectively, this percentage shifted to 29%, 36% and 35% in 1800. In concluson, this trend of population does show that the effects of population grow toward economy could be positive as Beserup’s theory rather than being negative as Malthus

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