MALTHUS THEORY OF POPULATION VS ESTHER BOSERUP THEORY

Population means the number of people in a geographical area. It can also be used for subgroups of people or animals and they have capability of interbreeding. It describes a group of individuals of the same species occupying a specific area at a specific time.

Theory is a set of assumptions, propositions or accepted facts that attempts to provide rational explanation of cause and effect relationships among a group of observed phenomenon. It is a set of ideas that is intended to explain something or a subject. the theories are analytical tools for understanding, explaining and making predictions about a given subject matter.

Basically, there are theories that explain on the concept of population growth in relation to the global       limited available resources including Malthus theory, theory of Demographic transition, Boserup’s theory, Thomas Doubleday’s diet theory, Herbert spencer’s biological theory. But specifically the discussion below includes background, similarities and differences between on the main two population theories named as Malthus theory and Boserup theory.

BACK GROUND OF MALTHUS THEORY AND BOSERUP THEORY

Malthus theory:

This theory was stated by Thomas Malthus; He was born in 13 February 1766 and died in 29 December 1834.He was an English cleric and scholar influential in the field of political economy and demography. He also wrote a book known as An Essay on the Principle of population  as he observed that an increase in a nations food production improved the well-being of the populace but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth which in turn restored the original per capital production level in other words mankind had a propensity to utilize abundance  for population growth  rather than for maintaining a high  standard of living a view that has become known as the "Malthus trap "or the “Malthusian  spectre".  (Dupaquier,2001), He also believe that population had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship and want greater susceptibility to famine and disease a view that is sometimes referred to as Malthus catastrophe .He wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18^th century he saw population growth as being inevitable whenever conditions improved there by precluding real progress towards a utopian society "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man as an divinely imposed to teach virtuous behavior  Malthus wrote "That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence. That Population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase and that the superior power of population is repressed by moral restraint vice and misery” Malthus criticized the poor laws for leading to inflation rather than improving the wellbeing of the poor .He supported taxes on grain imports (the corn laws) because food security was more important than maximizing wealth. His views became influential and controversial across economic political social and scientific thought pioneers of evolutionary biology read him notably Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace. He remains a much debated writer. 

Boserup’s theory:

This theory was stated by Esther Boserup; she was born on May 18, 1910 and died September 24, 1999. She was a Danish economist who studied economic and agricultural development, worked at the United Nations as well as other international organizations and wrote seminal books on agrarian change and the role of women in development .Boserup is known for her theory of agricultural intensification also known as Quays’ theory which posits that population change drives the intensity of agricultural production. Her position countered the Malthusian theory that agricultural methods determine population via limits on food supply. Her best known book on is The Conditions of Agricultural Growth presents a dynamic analysis embracing all types of primitive agriculture "(Boserup E1965.p13). A major point of her book was necessity is the mother of invention "Her other major work was women’s Role in Economic Development advanced the view that women’s role in economic development was in sufficiently valued. She believed that humanity would always find a way and she was quoted saying "The power of ingenuity would always out match the debate on the women in workforce and human development and the possibility of better opportunities of work and education for women.

SIMILARITIES BETWEEN MALTHUS THEORY AND BOSERUP THEORY

Malthus and Boserup both had theory describing the concept of population growth relating to food supply. in spite of the fact that they lived the different area they both tried to explain opposite concepts but of the same manner about population size of their lives based on how the world was in that particular time. Boserup suggested that the more people there are, the more the hand there are to work while Malthus suggested that as the demand of food increase supplies come under greater pressure, hence he believed that if the human population continued to grow, food production would not be able to keep up with demand and there would not be enough food to go around thus it shows that they were both focus on population distribution.

Both agree that the rise of population will increase demand for food. Malthus said that as population rise exponentially then the food will increase arithmetically hence food supply will decrease and demand for food will rise. Also Boserup agree that population will lead to the increase of demand for food hence the population will innovate the means of solving the problem and this will complete the meaning of Boserup that population is incentive of production.

Both theories discuss to the idea of the balance between population and resources, changing population can be viewed in relation to how many resources are available to support that population, pessimistic of Thomas Malthus and the optimism attitudes of Esther Boserup.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MALTHUS THEORY AND BOSERUP THEORY

Thomas Malthus suggests that the global population is increasing exponentially while global resource production and extraction are only increasing arithmetically.  Hence he suggests that there is a point where the earth’s resources will not be able to support the ever growing population. While Esther Boserup views contrast it, she suggests that the population itself is a resource. Humans have the means and knowledge to overcome the lack of resources by inventing new ways of resource extraction and production. In support of this view are new ways of food production, fertilizers, food technology modified crops, new technologies to find oil reserves. This increases the earth’s carrying capacity.

Thomas argument was essentially that population grew geometrically (1,2,4,8,16,32) where as food products and resources provision grew at a slower arithmetic rate (1,2,3,4,5,6). He concluded that because of this more and more peasants and subsistence farmers would live poorer and poorer lives until some checks came into place. He proposed that there would be positive checks which raise the death rates and preventive checks which lower the birth rate. The positive checks include hunger disease and war while the preventives include abortion, birth controls, prostitution, postponements of marriage and celibacy. While the alternative view point came from Esther who suggests that human innovation and technological advancement would allow food production to keep up with growing population. She was a Danish economist and published “The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian change under population pressure.

Malthus said that population increase had an increased demand on food supply and said that with increased demand would eventually decrease food production. This idea is based upon the law of diminishing returns were increased population would increase the pressure onto farm more intensively and cultivate poorer land leading to poorer yields. While Boserup she argued that when population density is low enough to allow it land tends to be used intermittently (not frequently-with gaps in time to allow land to recover) with heavy reliance on fire to clear fields and fallowing to restore fertility. It is only when rising population density reduce the use of fallowing (and therefore the use of fire) that fields are moved towards annual cultivation. This reduces fertility and to deal with this people expanded efforts at fertilizing field preparation, weed control and irrigation. This process of raising production at the cost of more work at lower efficiency is what Boserup describes as agricultural intensification.

There are limitations to Malthus theory though he couldn’t have seen the enormous changes in farming technology that enable us to produce tons of food. He also failed to predict that the reduced population growth as countries develop economically and progress through the later stages of the demographic transition model. Malthus theory ignores the role played by technology because it was developed in 1798 before the Agrarian revolution. While Boserup theory was developed in 1968 after the Agrarian revolution hence saw the importance of technology on increasing food production that could support the available population. Although the limitation of the theory is that her idea is also based on a “closed community”. But in reality there are no closed communities due to migration of people from one place to another.

Basing on these two theories, Malthusian theory and Boserup theory provide various applications into present population such as follows,

If we continue to grow so exponentially without technological advances the earths will eventually hit carrying capacity as we see in developing countries the population increasing with little changes in technological advancement which cause over exploitation of available resources like land, and finally result to famine and hanger.

Apart from that these two theories help the government to establish various measures like provision of knowledge on the mechanisms that can be used to deal with the number of people and available resources as explained by Malthus like the establishment of the family planning and postponement of marriage likewise the increasing population should be correlate to the technological advancement so as to manage resources technologically as it is proposed by Boserup.

These two theories seem to be somewhat different to one another by considering their basic assumptions.  This is due to the fact that Malthus and Boserup are from different eras such that, Thomas Malthus lived through the 18th-19^th century while Ester Boserup lived through the 20^th century. In this time these two theories were divided by the industrial revolution, which automatically means that the views on world population and resources were different. In other way Malthus believed the increasing number of people threaten the available resources but his idea are very pessimistic since he did not take into account that technology continue to become more advanced and there may be a way to solve problems related to population growth technologically before we hit the earth caring capacity. Boserup believe that increasing population leads to the increase in production but she fail to recognize the limited resources like land which become scarcer as the population grow.