Frederic P Miller

Malthusian Catastrophe Frederic P Miller

Publisher Marketing: Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. A Malthusian catastrophe (also called a Malthusian check, crisis, disaster, or nightmare) was originally foreseen to be a forced return to subsistence-level conditions once population growth had outpaced agricultural production. Later formulations consider economic growth limits as well. The term is also commonly used in discussions of oil depletion. Based on the work of political economist Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), theories of Malthusian catastrophe are very similar to the subsistence theory of wages. The main difference is that the Malthusian theories predict over several generations or centuries, whereas the subsistence theory of wages predicts over years and decades. An August 2007 science review in The New York Times raised the claim that the Industrial Revolution had enabled the modern world to break out of the Malthusian Trap, while a front page Wall Street Journal article in March 2008 pointed out various limited resources which may soon limit human population growth because of a widespread belief in the importance of prosperity for every individual and the rising consumption trends of large developing nations such as China and India.