STUDY UNIT 17: Theories of population and development Flashcards
define and discuss meaning of theory
as “a system of interconnected
abstractions or ideas that condenses and organises knowledge about the social
world”. According to this definition, theories firstly consist of abstractions or
ideas. This means that they refer to things that are not immediately observable,
such as the study guide in front of you or the table on which you are typing,
but to more complex concepts such as “fertility decline” or “population growth”.
These concepts need to be defined precisely before we can use them, because
their meanings are not all too obvious
how has population been viewed in the past
–
a resource or power base (for example, the mercantilists believed that
population growth was a stimulus for economic and social development)
–
a threat to development or social stability (for example, the physiocrats
believed that economic resources determined the size of the population)
–
a neutral, self-regulating entity (for example, Condorcet and Godwin believed
that human progress had few limits and that the challenges posed by
population growth could easily be met)
what important concepts did malthus state in his population theory
––the principle of population
There is a positive
relationship between population size and food prices, according to Malthus,
but a negative relationship between food prices and real income. This
is because human populations tend to increase geometrically
––geometric and arithmetic growth
––positive checks
1 positive checks, where the death rate increases (due to famine and
malnutrition)
––preventative checks
2 preventative checks, which in Malthusian terms meant moral restraint
through the postponement of marriage and refraining from premarital
or extramarital sex, resulting in a decline in fertility and thus in a new
equilibrium between people and food supplies
––moral restraint
what are the criticisms of malthus theory
1 The historical and social context in which Malthus wrote his theory
of population is of paramount importance here. You should note
that during the time of his writing, in 1798, Britain was experiencing
a five-year period of poor harvests and ensuing food shortages and
life expectancy at birth was less than 50 years (Weeks 2005:105). It
would appear that he did not foresee the Agricultural Revolution and
the rapid improvements in transportation technology and increases
in longevity that were to follow. His principle of population was based
on an assumption that only very small improvements in human life
expectancy were possible
Malthus’ principle of population also did not foresee the Industrial
Revolution, generally dated as beginning in the early 19th century,
and the rapid improvements in people’s living standards and economic
wellbeing that followed, as a result of advances made in science
and the development of new technology and machinery
the one that targets the heart
of his principle of population, namely that food supply would inevitably
lag behind population growth. On the contrary, critics such as Charles
Darwin have shown that plants and animals, if left unchecked, can
also increase geometrically
criticised for overstating his preventative check
of moral restraint, without which, according to him, human societies
will be crippled by hunger, poverty and misery (Schaefer 2005:487).
Critics have pointed out that he failed to consider other birth control
measures such as contraception.
On the one
hand, Malthus gives priority to human agency (human free will) by
proposing that people can escape from their misery and attain a
higher standard of living by working hard and by avoiding marriage
until such time that they are able to afford it. On the other hand,
Malthus seems to be limiting human agency with his argument that
only those who exercise moral restraint can attain higher standards
of living (Weeks 1999:84). This confusion in Malthus’s theorising is
very difficult to understand.
His understanding was
that welfare laws (the Poor Laws) in Britain would help produce morechildren for those with welfare allowances (Weeks 1999:84). In other
words, that the Poor Laws in Britain would prevent the poor from
exercising moral restraint. The fact that this did not happen in Britain,
at the time of his writing, clearly shows that some of his predictions
were wrong
explain theory of Neo-Malthusianism
Their argument was that rapid
population growth was connected to issues of environmental degradation
and the depletion of non-renewable resources and they advocated global
intervention in rapid population growth through direct measures such as
mass family planning programmes, increasing the legal age for marriage,
providing incentives to encourage people to make smaller family sizes
the norm, and indirect measures such as improved education (especially
for women) and child health programmes.
Their main conclusions were that the world population, if
left unchecked, would outstrip the earth’s carrying capacity (you should
remember that we have said that the concept carrying capacity refers to
the number of people that can be supported in an area given the amount
of resources available in that area and given the way that people use
those resources – see study unit 16). The consequences of this would be
a decline in industrial production and an increase in human suffering
what are antinatalist views
antinatalist views we refer to views that
support measures intended to slow down population growth by limiting the
number of births in the population
elaborate on the Marxist perspective on population
Marx’s
theory, centred on the nature of economic relations in industrial
societies, which he regarded as “the central problem” that
should form the basis of societal analysis, not the problem of overpopulation.
The Marxist position is that there is no global problem of overpopulation,
because the relationship between population growth and agricultural production
– food supply and population numbers – is shaped differently by concrete
social and economic relations
provide a comparison between Malthus and Marx’s theories of population
Malthus’ principle of population purported to reveal a general law of population
– a universal law of population – according to which population growth will
(in the absence of preventative checks) outstrip subsistence production and
cause hunger, malnutrition and death. It is called a universal law of population
because it is applicable according to Malthus to all types of human societies,
not only capitalist ones.
Marx has argued by contrast that there is no theory of population which can
assume the same features wherever or whenever it appears. No meaningful
comparisons can be made across all types of societies, according to Marx;
every society must be understood on its own terms, not be lumped together
with others as if they are all the same.
they
provided different solutions to the same problem, the problem of poverty.
For Malthus, in order to keep the population in check and avoid the consequences
of poverty, people should apply the preventative check of moral restraint. For
Marx, the solution to poverty lies in a socialist revolution, led by the working
class. Marx proposed a radical (root and branch) transformation of the capitalist
social order as a whole
the different social contexts in which the two theories
emerged should also be considered. Malthus wrote his Essay when Europe
was in the early stages of a demographic transition and mortality decline
and the age of marriage had a great influence on the size and growth of the
population. Marx as you will recall, wrote his theory of population during the
Industrial Revolution (see study units 3), when economic development and
improvements in living standards were helping to bring down mortality rates
and contributing to gains in life expectancy
provide similarities in Malthusian and Marxist theories
of population.
––Firstly, both Marx and Malthus agreed that the abject poverty that
characterised the lives of the working class was a severe problem to be
addressed (their solutions to the problem however were very different,
as we have seen).
––Secondly, both Marx and Malthus gave the economic base of society
a central place in their analyses
what are some Criticisms of Marx’s theory of population
some of Marx’s predictions have been proven to be wrong
the Chinese experience (as you know, China is a socialist/communist
society) reveals the limitations of understanding population trends and processes
in terms of the logic of the capitalist economy framed by Marx. In the early 1950s
the Chinese government imposed several restrictions on marriage, in order
to control population growth (the Malthusian solution); and soon thereafter, in
1957, the government introduced contraception (the neo-Malthusian solution),
for exactly the same reason, to keep the population in check. And in the 1970s,
China called for planned human reproduction, a policy proposal which ran
counter to the popular Marxist position that the solution to population growth/
poverty lies in the distribution of natural goods/resources
