Malthus and Overpopulation
Malthus was correct in a limited context regarding population. In some parts of the world, cities -- such as Dhaka, Hong Kong, and Mumbai -- are very densely populated and may be considered overpopulated given the square footage per person ratios (Smith). They are overcrowded and individuals are packed into these cities in much the same way sardines are packed into tins. In these regions, Malthus's assertion, that population increases geometrically while food supply increases arithmetically, can be discerned as evidently true based on the configurations of the people in the region. However, when one looks at whole countries, such as Germany, Japan, or even the U.S., one can see a decline in population that Kotkin calls a "death spiral" -- i.e., in that long-term low birth-rates are causing populations to dwindle.
The issue here is that Malthus never saw the expansion of birth control to the extent that it has overtaken much of the developed world. As of 2010, nearly half of all women capable of bearing children were using some form of birth control according to the study conducted by Darney and Speroff. What this indicates is that in many countries, overpopulation is not a...
In other parts of the world, such as densely packed cities in developing worlds like India and Bangladesh and even in highly modernized city-states like Hong Kong, overpopulation is apparent. However, with global trade and food capable of being produced on one side of the world and shipped to another, the issues that Malthus warns of are not really relevant in the modern context. So long as trade barriers are not a concern, there is enough supply to meet demand -- and that is thanks mainly to technological advancements made in agriculture and farming, which allows massive quantities of food to be produced with relatively little labor.
Thus, in a global context, Malthus's warning regarding overpopulation is not correct because nearly half the world's child-bearing age women use some form of contraception, according to recent statistics -- and this has led to a decline in populations around the world. Only in cities such as Mumbai or Dhaka is overpopulation really most evident. Here, however, the issues that Malthus describes as being the underlying problem in overpopulation -- namely that there will not be…
