WAS MALTHUS RIGHT?

The title of this paper embraces two sets of questions, one pertaining to Malthus' theoretical structure, the other to its empirical plausibility. This paper is more concerned with the latter than with the former set of questions. For expositive convenience we may say that Malthus' Essay was dominated by two propositions: (a) that population elasticity commonly though not necessarily approximated unity:[1] and (b) that the augmentability of the supply of product or income was limited and subject to diminution at the margin.
This paper is concerned mainly with the second proposition. After discussing Malthus' conception of the problem and the roles of limitational factors and checks, I review the present status of food-supply prospects, the primary limiting factor in Malthus' scheme. The first proposition, as I have stated it, may misrepresent Malthus' view somewhat, since his basic proposition was that man has a great capacity to multiply in the absence of checks. His model of the determinants of fertility was incomplete, however, and overestimated population elasticity in some circumstances, in part perhaps because he underestimated so markedly the prospective increase in aggregate output and the changes in the economic environment to which man must adjust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]