Terminale Reading comprehension : Views about demographic trends

Thomas Malthus was a British demographer who believed that the size of a population was limited by its food supply. His theory was that any increase in population beyond a certain level would lead to a decline in living standards and to 'war, famine and disease'. He published his views in 1798. Fortunately, many of Malthus's pessimistic predictions have not come to pass, but they form an interesting theory and provide a possible warning for the future. His theory was based on two principles:

1 Human population, if unchecked, grows at a geometric or exponential rate, i.e. *. 1 - 2 - 4 - 8 - 16 - 32, etc.

2 Food supply, at best, only increases at an arithmetic rate, i.e. 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 – 5 - 6, etc. Malthus claimed that this was due to a shortage of land or that yields from a given field could not go on increasing forever.

Boserup was a Danish economist who in 1965 offered an alternative theory. Whereas Malthus claimed that food supply was the main limit to population size, she asserted that in a pre-industrial society, an increase in population was likely to stimulate a change in farming technology and result in increased food production i.e. necessity is the mother of invention! Boserup studied various land use systems based upon differences in intensity of production and frequency of cropping, from shifting cultivation in the tropical rainforests to multiple cropping in S E Asia. She suggested that as population increased, farming became more intensive with the innovation and introduction of new methods and technology.

From Geography-an Integrated Approach, David Waugh (Nelson 1990).