Thomas Malthus: biography of this researcher in political economy

Malthus was famous for advocating measures to control demography as an economic proposal.

Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) was an English demographer and economist known for a theory that bears his name: Malthusianism. He broadly suggests that population growth inevitably leads to a decrease in food supply, so he proposes a control of reproduction and birth rate.

Below is a biography of Thomas Malthianism. we will see a biography of Thomas Malthusas well as some of his main contributions to economic and demographic thought.

Thomas Malthus: biography of an important economist.

Thomas Malthus was born on February 13, 1766 in south London. He was the sixth of seven siblings, all children of Henrietta and Daniel Malthus. This was an important family of intellectuals, who were even close friends of philosophers such as David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. were close friends of philosophers such as David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.. As time went by, Malthus created a close relationship with another great economist of the time, David Ricardo.

As a young man, Thomas Malthus was able to attend Jesus College, in Cambridge. There he took courses in declamation, Latin and Greek, although his main subject of study was mathematics. By 1791, Malthus had graduated as a specialist in these areas, and was made a fellow of the same college two years later. In 1979, he was ordained he was ordained and became an Anglican pastor..

Years later, in 1804, he formed a family with Harriet Eckersall, with whom he had three children, and whose education was strongly influenced by Rousseau's liberal ideas on education.

Like other members of his family, Thomas Malthus had a cleft palate that affected his speech, as well as a cleft lip. For this reason he had refused to make a personal portrait, which was typical at the time. It was not until 1833, after undergoing surgery, that he decided to have it done.

Thomas Robert Malthus died on December 29, 1834, in Rookery, though his remains are in Rookery.although his remains are in Bath Abbey in England.

Academic activity and memberships.

Malthus served as professor of history and political economy at Haileybury College in Hertfordshire. In fact, this was the first time that the term "political economy" was used in the academic context in Britain in reference to a subject.

In 1819 Malthus was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1821 he joined the Political Economy Club. joined the Political Economy Club. Other members of the same society were David Ricardo and James Mill. Almost a decade later, in 1833, Malthus was elected a member of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, as well as a member of the Royal Academy of Berlin. Finally, in 1834, Malthus was one of the founders of the Statistical Society of London.

Malthusianism

In 1798, Malthus published a first edition of the text "An essay on the principles of population and how they affect the future development of society". Since its publication, this work had a wide repercussion. Malthus argued forcefully that social development was doomed to failure because of accelerated population growth. In turn, population growth would increase at an ever-increasing rate if strict control was not exercised..

Thus, the problem posed by Malthus is that this population growth did not occur at the same time as the increase in the means of subsistence.

While population increase had a "geometric rhythm", the means of subsistence increased in a purely "arithmetical" progression. The population would always tend to grow beyond the limits of subsistence, which would eventually translate into a "geometric rate" of population growth.which would eventually result in poverty, war, disease and death. For Malthus, one of the remedies would be, for example, self-control and contraception.

Some criticisms

His work is recognized as a pessimistic vision, since it presented poverty as one of the presented poverty as one of the inevitable phenomena for the human species. for the human species. His work has also been criticized for having started in an abstract and analytical language. In fact, he has been claimed not to have conducted rigorous statistical analysis, even though such a method of research was in full growth in Europe and Britain.

For some critics, although Malthus had used empirical evidence in the development of his theory, the theory itself tended to be less concise in such evidence, and stronger in the theoretical development itself.

In any case, Malthusianism quickly became incorporated into mainstream theories. was quickly incorporated into mainstream economic theories and represented a major break with and represented a major break with excessive economic optimism, while offering a justification for the theory of wages based on the minimum cost of subsistence and discrediting more traditional forms of charity.

Outstanding works

Some of the most representative works of Thomas Malthus's work are An Essay on the Principle of Populationof 1933; An Investigation of the Cause of the Present High Price of Provisionsof 1800; and Principles of Political Economy in two volumes of 2008. He is also recognized for works such as Definitions in Political Economyof 1827 and Importation of Foreign Corn of 1996.