Death by 1,000 Births: Thomas Malthus place in Economic History Robert Eyler, PhD Professor of Economics Sonoma State University June 26, 2017
Does Population Growth Scare You? China 2050: 1.45 billion India 2050: 1.71 billion USA 2050: 389 million Nigeria 2050: 380 million Multiple issues to consider Political administration Social concerns: cities Hygiene and utilities Food! The Chinese population estimate is highly debated due to the one-child policy
Local Arguments about population growth, 2017 Jobs that pay good wages Density Traffic Housing Natural Resources Are these questions new? Is there a natural balance here we can measure?
The threat and the cure We will breed ourselves to death Standards of living fall as we have more births than deaths The cure: technological progress maybe Mankind has been here before
Pre-industrial Europe Source: Google Images
Quick Supply and Demand Reminder Demand The willingness and ability to purchase a good or service Downward sloping in opportunity cost to quantity (inverse relationship) Supply The willingness and ability to produce and sell a good or service Positive relationship (upward-sloping) between opportunity cost and quantity For demographers, the price or opportunity cost is the standard of living or income level The quantity is the population size
The standard framework for doing so is the Malthusian model Thomas Robert Malthus was born into a wealthy family in 1766, educated at Cambridge, and became a professor at Cambridge and eventually an Anglican parson. His students referred to him as Pop Malthus ( Pop for population). Malthus Essay on the Principle of Population, published in 1798, became a contemporary best seller. (All economists should be so lucky.) Source: Google Images 7
Iron Law of Wages before Marx 1. The BIRTH RATE is a socially determined constant, independent of material living standards. 2. The DEATH RATE declines as living standards increase. 3. MATERIAL LIVING STANDARDS decline as population increases. Malthus suggested that, holding technology constant, no significant increase in living standards if population growth continued. What does technology do when advancing?
Greg Clark, Professor UC Davis The vast swath of humanity eked out a living under conditions probably significantly poorer than those of cavemen. Stature, a measure of both the quality of diet and of children s exposure to disease, was higher in the Stone Age than in 1800. Source: A Farewell to Alms, 2007, Princeton U. Press
Malthus model was based on 3 assumptions: The tendency for population growth to put pressure on the land, depressing living standards in what were predominantly agricultural economies. The tendency for lower living standards to raise mortality rates (e.g., increasing susceptibility to infectious disease). The tendency for lower living standards to depress fertility (in the English case, with which Malthus was most familiar, by raising age of marriage).
Graphically, the three elements look like this technology curve Source: A Farewell to Alms, 2007, Princeton U. Press 7
What is the effect of technological progress in this model? Stagnation of living standards was a function of birth and death rates fluctuating and markets reacting. Source: A Farewell to Alms, 2007, Princeton U. Press 9
Stationary equilibrium is restored with higher population, no change in living standards Source: A Farewell to Alms, 2007, Princeton U. Press 13
Clark shows how this happened in practice (Notice not just shift in the locus to the right but also reversion of real wages to previous levels) Source: A Farewell to Alms, 2007, Princeton U. Press 14
What is the effect of improvements in sanitation, medical knowledge in this model? Answer: deterioration in the material standard of living Source: A Farewell to Alms, 2007, Princeton U. Press 15
The Black Death: A Natural Experiment The mother of all natural experiments. 40-50% of Europe s population died. In certain places, such as Venice, death rates were been as high as 75 percent. Only a handful of areas were spared: in the Low Countries, in Southwest France, and in Eastern Europe. Source: Google Images 16
How the plague spread Source: Google Images 17
Economic effects of the population decline Land-labor ratios improved, and wages increased substantially. Farmers could concentrate on the most fertile land. This surplus allowed some workers to stop farming and turn to manufacturing (linens, cloth, apparel, shoes, horseshoes, etc.) There may be reason to think that learning by doing and innovation were most pronounced. 18
But why didn t population respond, and wipe out the income growth, as Malthus would have predicted? Source: Brad DeLong The Black Death didn t last forever. By the end of the 14 th century that bacterium carrying the plague had largely disappeared from Europe (to reappear periodically). In other words, Malthus mortality schedule should have shifted back to the left. The behavior of real wages 1450-1500 is consistent with this 19
Alternative Explanations: Birth Rates Fertility limitations: Puritanical Behavior Think the Crucible: limited extramarital affairs Average birth rates were 3.5 4 per adult woman. Biological maximum was 9 children per woman Evidently, actual fertility was less than half the biological maximum. This seems like evidence of birth control? Abstinence Extended periods of breastfeeding Most important method: delaying marriage age Western European marriage pattern
Clark took a more economic approach He argues that marriage patterns were regulated not simply by social convention but by the individual decisions of rational economic agents. Hmmm. He argues that early marriage was desired on both consumption and investment grounds (it was pleasant to have a mate; grown children were an economic asset) Early marriage also had its costs (young workers had limited means, and hence limited ability to support a family). 2 x Hmmm.
China did not experience the same In China, where living standards were lower than in Western Europe by this time, age of first marriage should have been higher, by this logic. But for women it was on average 19. And fully 99 per cent of women appear to have married. There was some family limitation behavior in China also Children per married woman was 5. But the mechanism must have been different. Scholars now emphasize extended breastfeeding as a spacing mechanism Cultural beliefs that sexual activity was damaging to health.
So What? Can we learn modern lessons here? Are we facing social crises due to more births than deaths? Are we already in a state of crisis? What new technologies may help or hurt this? Was Malthus Right?
Greg Clark A Farewell to Alms Princeton University Press, 2007 Thanks! eyler@sonoma.edu @bobby7007