Thomas Robert Malthus

In the most famous work on population ever written, An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) attacked the English Poor Laws as an ill-thought-out way to reduce poverty in England. In fact, he argued, public relief only results in stimulating population growth and making the situation worse. In the following viewpoint, Malthus states that two kinds of checks, positive and preventive, work to keep population from growing indefinitely. Late marriage was one of Malthus’s preventive checks. It is interesting to note that Malthus practiced what he preached: This onetime country parson waited to get married until he was thirty-nine (when he became a professor of history and political economy), and he limited himself to three children, only one of whom lived to maturity.

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