Origin
Thomas Robert Malthus was an English economist who first created the concept of overpopulation in his work titled "An essay on the Principle of Population: Or, A View of Its Past and Present…" in Guildford, Surrey in 1798 (History. (2014) . During this time, England was experiencing the Industrial Revolution, Agricultural Revolution, and other movements that raise their population (The Industrial Revolution Begins in England (1760-1850) (n.d.). However, Thomas Malthus ideas contradicted with that of England's society of economic growth as well as how other authors like Adam Smith, author of "The Wealth of Nations," who expressed the achievements that came from the Industrial Revolution like the division of labor that promoted more technological innovations and increase in productivity (The Wealth of Nations Summary. (1999-2014). For example, in his "An essay on the Principle of Population: Or, A View of Its Past and Present…", he discussed about the possibility of how the prosperous life will be short lived from having a large population that will use up all of the resources available to them. For example, in Malthus’s essay, “An Essay On The Principles Of Population; Or, A View Of Its Past And Present Effects On Human Happiness; With An Inquiry Into Our Prospects Respecting The Future Removal Or Mitigation Of The Evils Which It Occasions,” Malthus talked about the relationship between food and a growing population while providing ratios on a country’s growth compared to their output of food in an environment; however, “…the ratio of their increase in a limited territory must be of a totally different nature from the ratio of the increase in population…[man] is necessarily confined in room. When acre till all the fertile land is occupied, the yearly increase of food must depend upon the melioration of the land in possession. This is a fund, which, from the nature of all soils, instead of increasing, must be gradually diminishing” (Malthus, 1826). What Malthus means by this is that food is a limiting resource which can’t always sustain a large population of organism for a very long time if all of the resources like fertile land has been exhausted eventually leading to dire consequences.
However, Thomas Malthus has received much criticism about his ideals back from his time to even to today. For example, due to the fact that Thomas Malthus was from a wealthy family, Malthus's idea about how the Poor Law, a law that provided benefits to the poor, encouraged population growth was criticized by how Malthus wanted the law to be abolished which benefited the poor with allowances made by the government to support their children in his quote "A poor man may marry with little or no prospect of being able to support a family without parish assistance" from his essay entitled, "An essay on the Principle of Population: Or, A View of Its Past and Present…" (MacRae, D. (2014) & Huzel, J. (1969). Not only that, but Kenneth Smith, author of "The Malthusian Controversy," criticizes Malthus' ideas such as how his ratios and rate of population growth for people in America were inaccurate due to the "poor" quality of the data collected as well as how other critics like Karl Marx and Frederick Engels claimed that Malthus didn't account for other situations that may have led to either growth or less growth in the population from other factors like immigration, emigration, birth control, technological advances and more (Avaskar, 2012).
However, Thomas Malthus has received much criticism about his ideals back from his time to even to today. For example, due to the fact that Thomas Malthus was from a wealthy family, Malthus's idea about how the Poor Law, a law that provided benefits to the poor, encouraged population growth was criticized by how Malthus wanted the law to be abolished which benefited the poor with allowances made by the government to support their children in his quote "A poor man may marry with little or no prospect of being able to support a family without parish assistance" from his essay entitled, "An essay on the Principle of Population: Or, A View of Its Past and Present…" (MacRae, D. (2014) & Huzel, J. (1969). Not only that, but Kenneth Smith, author of "The Malthusian Controversy," criticizes Malthus' ideas such as how his ratios and rate of population growth for people in America were inaccurate due to the "poor" quality of the data collected as well as how other critics like Karl Marx and Frederick Engels claimed that Malthus didn't account for other situations that may have led to either growth or less growth in the population from other factors like immigration, emigration, birth control, technological advances and more (Avaskar, 2012).