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The Malthusian Population Theory

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Introduction In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote an essay about population growth that reflects a pessimistic view to future economic development. This essay was a result of his discussion with positivists that tend to praise perfectibility of the man and knowledge diffusion as a source of prosperity for future generations. Malthus essay about population growth based on observing 17th and 18th century US population data. The general idea of the essay – that when food is enough, population grows at a geometric rate and food production just arithmetically. (Malthusian and Neo-Malthusian Theories/ Ran Abramitzky and Fabio Braggion, 2003) Essay, "An Essay on the Principle of Population," is an excellent example of mathematical modeling. The Malthus model was a surprisingly good for prediction of population growth over short time intervals, but as it was discovered later, it does not work for long time intervals.
This paper has the following structure: the first chapter “Model description” contains general assumptions that were made for the model. In the chapter, “Model Composition” the formula of the Malthusian population growth model introduced and the production function will be defined. In the third chapter, the Low of Diminish Returns formulated, as it is impossible to describe …show more content…

On one hand, the model conflicts with the fact that in modern economics, per capita incomes exhibit a tendency to growth over time. On the other hand its prediction regarding the relationship between population growth and per capita income no longer hold in modern societies. In addition, the technological progress played general role in the society development. Nonetheless, as it was shown in the chapter “Empirical Support for the Malthusian Theory ” it is quite precisely describes tendencies that characterized dynamics in humans population growth before the industrial revolution and it still works for short term

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