Population Theories

Malthusian Theory(Robert Malthus)

• the earliest population theory which co-related population explosion with food crisis. It is deterministic & predictive theory of demographic changes.
• Malthus theory is termed as Naturalist Theory because it suggested the nature's mechanism as a control for population and an automated response to the society to control the population.
• Malthus suggested that the population grows at the exponential rate or geometric progression and food grows at asthmatic rate.

          Population    =     1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256,.......

          Food            =     1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.......

• Population doubles itself in every 25 years
• After 200 years the ratio of food & population reaches a critical point where a world crisis will take place & eventually by natural force, food crisis, or civil war population size will be brought back to the pre-industrial level.
• the critical ratio is 256:9
• [Insert figure]
• Malthus suggested 2 control measures:
• 1. Positive Checks
     • The natural controls have been termed as positive checks eg. earthquakes, natural, hazard, Tsunami, civil war, famine, etc.
  2. Preventive Checks
     • Man made or Human prevention
     1. Ethical Checks:- Celibacy, delay in marriage, use of contraceptives, etc
     2. Vice:- Prostitution, adultery, etc.(Such measures are evil for the society but yet, to have control over the population they can be part of society.)
• Malthus considered human have 2 propensity or instincts:
• 1. To have sex
  2. To have children
• Malthus theory thus relay on the biological instincts for population explosion.
• Malthus was in favour of capitalism & the population explosion takes place in the labour because they considered children as wealth. He justified capitalism or supported capitalism because in capitalistic economy the available surplus is reinvested & more employment generation and economic growth takes place.

Criticism of Malthus Theory

1. The arithmetic rate & geometric rate is incorrect.
2. Prediction of food crisis after 200 years has been proven wrong.
3. He ignored the technological progression of the man.
4. Too deterministic & predictive in nature.
5. 25 years for doubling the population is incorrect.
6. To have children is not a biological instinct but a social instinct.
7. Natural disasters controlling the population is questionable.

Marxian Theory(Karl Marx)

• Marx has not presented a separate theory on population, he is a critic to Malthus.
• He suggested that the capitalistic class has lower population growth because they tends to save the wealth for personal consumption & to find more leisure time for personal enjoyment, and while labour class has higher population growth rate because they consider "greater the no. of hands, more the wages earned". Thus children are wealth. 
• Since the population increases rapidly among the labour, the supply of labour also increases that reduces the wage rate & the income level falls and as a reaction to it a new explosion takes place due to increased reproduction rate found among labour class.
• While the capitalistic class increases concentration of wealth & the class differentiation further grows.
• Marx suggested that for population control fall of capitalism is the only mean and distributive justice, state control over resources can mitigate the food crisis. Thus his theory is socio-economic model of population control.

Malthus	Marx
Naturalist theory	Socio-economic theory
Favours capitalism	Against Capitalism
Population explosion takes place in the labour class	Population explosion takes place in labour class but mode of economy is responsible, not the labour class itself
He suggested positive & preventive checks	Fall of capitalism, distributive justice, state control over resources
To have children is a biological instinct	Social instinct & economic compulsion

Spencer

• British philosopher, his theory is also Naturalistic Theory.
• He is antithetical to Malthus and suggests that when population size reaches critical point where the carrying capacity of land falls lower than the population demand, population automatically controlled by instinct of the people to have lesser children.
• Such instinct in human are spontaneous, and population never rises beyond the critical limits. Thus population control is an automated response of the society as the reproduction rate falls due to the instinctive decision to have lesser children.

Dumont(Arsene Dumont)

• Socio-economic theory.
• He suggested, much like physical capillarity individuals have Social Capillarity, which means propensity to material growth, growing consumerism, seeking higher status in the society & raising the income level.

• The term "Social Capillarity" refers to the strong desire - reinforced by the very principle of democracy - which includes couples to restrict the no. of children, individualism, etc.

  
  
• Social capillarity is the phenomena of the modern society, it reduces the population growth rate due to:
• 1. Reduction in fecundity/fertility of the female.
  2. The fall in desire for population or biological instinct for sex.
  3. High consumerism
  4. Alcoholism
  5. Nuclearisation of family, growth of individualism.
• Demont has found a relationship between reducing population & rising economic level of society.