Lecture 6: “Population

explosion: Malthus’s trap

after 1,000 years ago”

CCGL9042: Evolution of Civilization

Dr. Larry Baum & Dr. Jack Tsao

Song 1 Song 2
 The Myth of
Sisyphus
• In Greek legend, Sisyphus was forced
to roll rocks up a mountain forever.

• Are we all Sisyphus, stuck in endless

cycles within Malthus’s trap, or will
we ever escape?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/
QujiLG93BKw?start=0&end=126
(2:05)
Thomas Robert Malthus
“Man cannot live in the midst of plenty”
- An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)

• Huh?! Why?

“Elevated as man is above all other animals by his

intellectual faculties, it is not to be supposed that
the physical laws to which he is subjected should be
essentially different from those which are observed
to prevail in other parts of the animated nature”
- A Summary View of the Principle of Population
(1830)
What did he mean?
­Births

¯Organisms ­Organisms

­Deaths Hit limits

 Carrying capacity
1. Any organism reproduces until it
hits limits. 2
– Food 3
– Water
– Space, etc.

Population
2. Death rate rises.
– Starvation 4
– Thirst 1
– Fighting, etc.
3. Population falls.
4. Repeat from step 1.
Time
 Carrying capacity
• Population oscillates around carrying
capacity.
• Carrying capacity changes if limits
change.
– Food
– Water
– Disease
• Malthus: humans do this, too.
 Malthusian trap
• Like animals:
– Standard of living doesn’t change.

– Population simply expands and

shrinks with changes in resources.
• No improvement in standard of
living, despite continuous invention
and innovation
• https://www.youtube.com/embed/
4V09jl5WIvw?start=0&end=363 (to
6:03)
Malthusian trap in action

Population
Plague killed doubled Malthus
half the people wrote

From Clark (2007), A Farewell to Alms

 Malthusian trap
• It’s horrible. What should we do?

• https://www.youtube.com/embed/uG_KHjd_P
Sc?start=90&end=97 (1:30-1:37)

• How can we get out?

 Limiting factor?
• First, what was the limiting factor for
population?
• Compare regions

From Clark (2007), A Farewell to Alms

 Height as proxy for standard of living
• Height
– A proxy for nutrition
– Nutrition reflects standard of living.
– Skeletons show height.
• Standard of living similar
everywhere?

From Clark (2007), A Farewell to Alms

 Height as proxy for standard of living
• Standard of living similar always?
• Did Industrial Revolution affect height?

From Clark (2007), A Farewell to Alms

 Height as proxy for standard of living
• Yes.
• Standard of living rose.

From Clark (2007), A Farewell to Alms

 How did we
get out of
the trap?
• England emerged first, in
1800s, during the Industrial
Revolution.
• Look at possible factors.
 Working harder?
• Look at work hours before vs. after
the Industrial Revolution started.

• Not harder

From Clark (2007), A Farewell to Alms

 Working harder?
• Look at work hours in hunter
gatherers.
• Look at work hours before and
after Industrial Revolution.

• Not much harder

From Clark (2007), A Farewell to Alms

 Working more efficiently?
• Look at food produced per hour in
hunter gatherers vs. England as
Industrial Revolution began.

• Not more efficiently

From Clark (2007), A Farewell to Alms

 Palace of Westminster

Government?
• British government
conducive to business.
– Parliament supported
merchants and middle class
more than monarchies did. Palace of Versailles
– Britain had fewer government
monopolies or restrictions
than, say, France or China.
– Allowed toll roads and canals
to ease transport.
• Maybe government helped.

Forbidden City
 More resources?

• Empire
– Britain had big
Empire in 1800s.
– By 1900, it had:
• 1/5 of world’s area
• 1/5 of world’s GDP
Colonies Ever Held by British Empire
• 1/4 of world’s people

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anachronous_map_of_the_British_Empire.png
 More resources?
• Empire
– But Britain small.
– Ratio of Empire to
Britain in 1900:
• People: 10X
• Area: 150X
• GDP: 2-3X
 More resources?
• Empire
– Concentrated wealth
• Much of world’s
wealth onto 2% of
world’s people in 1850
• £ was most of world’s
foreign exchange
reserves by 1900.

https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2015/12/17/how-austerity-destroyed-the-british-empire/
 More resources?
• Imports
– Britain imported
wheat.
– From US from
mid-1800s.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140801130432/http://economics.ouls.ox.ac.uk/15309/1/FromMaltus.pdf
 More resources?
• Imports
– Wheat got
cheaper in Britain
from mid-1800s.
– Since people
spent ¾ of
income on food,
• More people
could survive.
• People could
buy luxuries.
 More resources?
• Minerals. By 1850, British Coal Production
Britain produced
– 2/3 of the world’s
coal
– 1/2 of the world’s
iron
• Maybe resources
helped.

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~rutledge/
 Land?
• North America accepted immigrants.
• Rising British population could emigrate.
• Maybe land helped.
 Innovation?
• Innovation has been raising
efficiency for millennia.
• But what matters is what
most people need: food,
clothing, and other
essentials.
• If they’re cheaper
– More people can survive.
– People can buy luxuries.

From Clark (2007), A Farewell to Alms

 Innovation?
• Industrial Revolution
– Coal
– Steam engines
• Transport
• Factories
– Automation
– Communications
– Chemicals
– Labor to turn each unit of cotton
into cloth fell 13X from 1760 to
1860.
• Maybe innovations helped
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zkxrxyc/revision/1
 Labor shortage?
In 1600’s, Japan reduced use of human power: manufacturing, livestock, horses for power.
So why did the Industrial Revolution happen in England and not Asia?
England Japan & China
Low food productivity High food productivity (rice)

Stable population Growing population From Clark (2007), A Farewell to Alms

Scarce, costly labor Plentiful, cheap labor

Employers mechanized Employers demechanized

Sparsely populated England had long runway for take-off to Industrial Revolution?
 Which one?
• Maybe all contributed
– Government policy
– Big empire:homeland ratio 2
– Dominated world trade 3
– Imported food
– Exported people
– Coal and iron

Population
– Multiple innovations
– Labor shortage
4
• https://www.youtube.com/embed/zhL5DCi
zj5c?start=0&end=619 (0-10:19) 1
• Together, they greatly boosted
carrying capacity.
• Sisyphus ran up the mountain and
threw the rock into orbit. Time
 Industrial revolution

[This is optional. If you want more videos on the industrial

revolution:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLhNP0qp38Q (3:58)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yqn8rpy-Ss (9:37)]
 Rise of standard of living

• Incomes shot up.

• Malthus: population will rise to
new carrying capacity, sending
income back to old level.
• But this time was different.
• Demographic transition

From Clark (2007), A Farewell to Alms

 Demographic transition

• Population doesn’t keep

growing.
• With development of
economy and society,
fertility drops.
• Why?
 Earning more?
When people earn more, they want fewer children?

http://www.nber.org/papers/w17057.pdf
 Pensions?
When people get pensions,
they no longer need many
children?
But parents in England
didn’t depend on kids for
support since at least
1600.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w17057.pdf
 Children survive?
When children survive, parents have fewer?

http://www.nber.org/papers/w17057.pdf
 Female education?
When people, particularly females, get educated, they want fewer children?

From Clark (2007), A Farewell to Alms http://www.nber.org/papers/w17057.pdf

 Changing social order
• Sex inequality was justified by notions of
biologically and religiously-determined gender
roles to exclude women from many types of jobs.
• Gender concepts such as separate spheres stated
that women’s ‘proper place’ is in
domestic/private domains.
• Improved economic and social conditions during
the Industrial Revolution started to change this
imagined social order.
• Liberation of women from gender norms and
stereotypes.
The Sinews of Old England (1857) by George
Elgar Hicks, supporting the idea of ‘separate
spheres’.
 Population bomb
• By mid-1900s,
demographic transition
not yet in many places
• China, India, Africa,
South America…
• World population rising

• Fear of mass famine

Birth control
• To stop disaster,
contraception promoted
• Some contraception
programs included
coerced sterilization.
– India: 1975-1977
– Bangladesh: 1970s-1980s
– China: 1-child policy,
1979-2015
– Peru: 1995-2000
• Voluntary programs
– Similar falls in fertility as
forced programs
– Education and availability
may be key
Birth control
Birth control
(~2000)

http://bib.muvs.org/data/mvs_000212/volume_2.pdf
 Birth control
• Nearly half of
pregnancies worldwide
are unintended.
• Thus, availability of
contraception is major
factor in demographic
transition.
• Once birth control
becomes available,
fertility will fall.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/demand-for-family-planning
 Population fizzle
• World population looks like rapid rise: population explosion.
• But if you look at rate of increase, trend is steady fall.
• 2022 UN estimates predict leveling off around 10 billion or so.
 Modern demographic transition
• Female education, infant mortality, contraception, etc. correlate with fertility.
• Cause always, cause sometimes, or confounders?
• Which should we improve: education, health, or contraception?
• Yes! https://www.youtube.com/embed/QsBT5EQt348?start=0&end=383 (6:23)

http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2014/update124
Demographic transition stages
Post-demographic
transition
• Some developed countries will shrink.
• Hard for workers to support retirees.
• Health burden of aging population
• Home abandonment (since urbanization)
• Italy
– Population decline of 7 million by 2065?
– Abandoned village for sale for €1.5 million
– Free homes in this village ――――→
 Source: RealestateJapan

Post-demographic
transition

Abandoned Homes in Japan

• Japan
– 1/3 of homes forecast to be empty by 2033.
– Costly to demolish them
• If Hong Kong housing costs too much,
consider moving to Italy or Japan.
Post-demographic
transition
• Or rural areas
– Shrinking even in countries with
growing populations
– Due to rural-urban migration
• Like this house in a town in
Kansas, USA:
 Post-demographic transition
• Fewer children: businesses
will change.
• Losers
– Toy stores
– Children’s clothes
– Diapers
• Winners
– Elderly care homes
– Geriatricians
– also diapers
Why shrinkage?
• Poor support for parents,
particularly women.
– Hard to get job
– Hard to keep job with kids
– Expensive childcare
• Solutions
– Support mothers
– Raise immigration
Single moms
• Many children are
born to single moms.
• Where?
– Many developed
countries
– Europe, Americas,
not Asia
Happy
parents

Do happier parents
have more kids?
Does money buy happiness?
• Depends on how much you need money.
– Ending poverty eliminates unhappiness (on
average).
– Strong correlation in middle of the range
– But once you’ve achieved a comfortable
life, more money doesn’t matter much.
 Summary
• Why did we get out of the Malthusian
Trap? The Industrial Revolution

• Why did we stay out? The

Demographic Transition
 Homework
To prepare for the next
lecture,
watch this one hour video:
“Don’t Panic: The Truth
About Population,
with Professor Hans
Rosling”
https://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=FACK2knC08E (58:50)
Enjoy your freedom from the trap