An Essay on the Principle of Population
The 1798 argument that population will always outrun food, and why it still provokes debate.
Thomas Malthus’s essay of 1798 argues that population tends to grow faster than the food supply, so that hunger and poverty act as checks on human numbers. The argument shaped economics, politics and the thinking of Darwin, and it is still debated in arguments about food and the planet. This is an Oxford World’s Classics edition.
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Tristram Stuart
More than 200 years ago, in The Principle of Population, Malthus raised questions about what we should eat – and farm – and how our choices affect our fellow humans. Most people today remember him for being a prophet of doom and gloom, predicting that population growth would outstrip food production causing widespread famine.
Interview · December 2009
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