Empirical methods Prescriptive and policy Thomas Robert Malthus FRS (/ˈmælθəs/; 13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834)[1] was an English economist, cleric, and scholar influential in the fields of political economy and demography.

Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want and greater susceptibility to war, famine, and disease, a pessimistic view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe.

[11] Malthus laid the "...theoretical foundation of the conventional wisdom that has dominated the debate, both scientifically and ideologically,[12] on global hunger and famines for almost two centuries.

[15] Malthus was born at The Rookery, a "small elegant mansion" at Westcott, near Dorking in Surrey, which his father had bought—at that time called Chertgate Farm—and converted into "a gentleman's seat"; the family sold it in 1768 and moved to "a less extensive establishment at Albury, not far from Guildford".

Malthus had a cleft lip and palate which affected his speech; such birth defects had occurred in previous generations of his family.

[16][17][14][18] William Petersen and John Maynard Keynes describe Daniel Malthus as "a gentleman of good family and independent means [...] [and] a friend of David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau".

Robert Malthus, was appointed vicar of Northolt, Middlesex (now West London) under the regicide Cromwell, but "evicted at the Restoration"; he was described as "an ancient divine, a man of strong reason, and mighty in the Scriptures, of great eloquence and fervour, though defective in elocution", due to "a very great impediment in his utterance" which has been concluded to be likely to have been a cleft palate.

The neo-Malthusian controversy, comprising related debates of many years later, has seen a similar central role assigned to the numbers of children born.

In 1799, Malthus made a European tour with William Otter, a close college friend, travelling part of the way with Edward Daniel Clarke and John Marten Cripps, visiting Germany, Scandinavia and Russia.

Near the end of 1817, the proposed appointment of Graves Champney Haughton to the college was made a pretext by Randle Jackson and Joseph Hume to launch an attempt to close it down.

He was drawn into considering political economy in a less restricted sense, which might be adapted to legislation and its multiple objectives, by the thought of Malthus.

They both professed to interpret Adam Smith as the true prophet, and represented different shades of opinion rather than diverging sects.

[51]It is now considered that the different purposes seen by Malthus and Ricardo for political economy affected their technical discussion, and contributed to the lack of compatible definitions.

[54] Malthus was a founding member in 1821 of the Political Economy Club, where John Cazenove tended to be his ally against Ricardo and Mill.

Between these chapters, he criticised several contemporary economists—Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, James Mill, John Ramsay McCulloch, and Samuel Bailey—for sloppiness in choosing, attaching meaning to, and using their technical terms.

[58] McCulloch was the editor of The Scotsman of Edinburgh and replied cuttingly in a review printed on the front page of his newspaper in March 1827.

This motivation of Malthus's work was disregarded by McCulloch, who responded that there was nothing to be gained "by carping at definitions, and quibbling about the meaning to be attached to" words.

[62] On the other hand, Malthus did have supporters, including Thomas Chalmers, some of the Oriel Noetics, Richard Jones and William Whewell from Cambridge.

This constant effort as constantly tends to subject the lower classes of the society to distress and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition.Malthus argued that two types of checks hold population within resource limits: positive checks, which raise the death rate; and preventive ones, which lower the birth rate.

However, the margin of abundance could not be sustained as population grew, leading to checks on population growth: If the subsistence for man that the earth affords was to be increased every twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what the whole world at present produces, this would allow the power of production in the earth to be absolutely unlimited, and its ratio of increase much greater than we can conceive that any possible exertions of mankind could make it ... yet still the power of population being a power of a superior order, the increase of the human species can only be kept commensurate to the increase of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity acting as a check upon the greater power.In later editions of his essay, Malthus clarified his view that if society relied on human misery to limit population growth, then sources of misery (e.g., hunger, disease, and war) would inevitably afflict society, as would volatile economic cycles.

On the other hand, "preventive checks" to population that limited birthrates, such as later marriages, could ensure a higher standard of living for all, while also increasing economic stability.

In the second and subsequent editions Malthus put more emphasis on moral restraint as the best means of easing the poverty of the lower classes.

"[73] In this work, his first published pamphlet, Malthus argues against the notion prevailing in his locale that the greed of intermediaries caused the high price of provisions.

However, he concludes by saying that in time of scarcity such Poor Laws, by raising the price of corn more evenly, actually produce a beneficial effect.

He argued that given the increasing cost of growing British corn, advantages accrued from supplementing it from cheaper foreign sources.

In Ireland where (writing to Ricardo in 1817) Malthus proposed that "to give full effect to the natural resources of the country a great part of the population should be swept from the soil into large manufacturing and commercial Towns",[81][82] a comparatively early contribution was Observations on the population and resources of Ireland (1821) by the polymath and physician Whitely Stokes.

One of the best men and truest philosophers of any age or country, raised by native dignity of mind above the misrepresentations of the ignorant and the neglect of the great, he lived a serene and happy life devoted to the pursuit and communication of truth, supported by a calm but firm conviction of the usefulness of his labors, content with the approbation of the wise and good.

The spotless integrity of his principles, the equity and candour of his nature, his sweetness of temper, urbanity of manners and tenderness of heart, his benevolence and his piety are the still dearer recollections of his family and friends.