Malthus Should Have Checked Prices
From 1700 to 1798 population in England increased 49.1 percent, while personal flour abundance increased by 43.5 percent. More people were making flour more abundant not less.
Thomas Malthus published his Essay on Population in 1798 arguing that population would exceed the capacity of the planet to produce food. If Malthus had checked the history of flour prices and GDP per Capita in England from 1700 to 1798, he may have realized that his theory was falsified.
Population in England from 1700 to 1798 increased 49.1 percent from 5.2 million to 7.75 million.1 If flour was a fixed resource, then a 49.1 percent increase in population would mean that everyone would get 32.9 percent less. That didn’t happen. During this 98-year period GDP per capita increased 93.7 percent from 12.46 to 24.13 pounds.2 The price of flour increased 34.9 percent from 1.67 to 2.25 pence.3 The ratio of flour prices to GDP per capita declined 30.3 percent from 0.13 to 0.09.
So while population increased by 49.1 percent, the time price of flour (money price divided by GDP per capita) declined by 30.3 percent. More people were making flour more abundant. For the time required to earn the money to buy one pound of flour in 1700, you would get 1.43 pounds in 1798. Flour had become 43 percent more abundant for the average person.
While population increased by 49.1 percent, the size of flour resources in England grew by 113 percent.4 Every one percent increase in population corresponded to a 2.3 percent in flour abundance.
We analyzed data on the price of wheat for blue-collar workers in the U.S. from 1850 to 2018 and found that the time had fallen by 98.5 percent. The time required to earn the money to buy one pound of wheat in 1850 would get you 64.8 pounds in 2018. Wheat became 6,386 percent more abundant over this 168 year period. During this same period, global population increased 519 percent from around 1.26 billion in 1850 to 7.8 billion in 2018. Every one percent increase in population corresponded to a 12 percent increase in personal wheat abundance. Considering the growth in population, global wheat abundance increased by 40,000 percent.5
The lesson learned is that physical quantities of a resource are important, but the time price contains much more information and really reveals abundance and therefore should be the focus of analysis.
Some say Malthus inspired Thomas Carlyle to bestow upon economics its infamous dismal science moniker. If Malthus had checked the facts against his theoretical model, he may have saved millions the despair of thinking the world was running out of resources.
Excerpt from our forthcoming book, Age of Superabundance
Gale Pooley is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and a board member at Human Progress
Population: Wrigley and Schofield, "The Population History of England, 1541–1871. A reconstruction.", Harvard University Press, 1981, Table 7.8, pgs. 208-9
GDP per capita: Measuringworth.com
Flour prices: Gregory Clark, The Long March of History: Farm Wages Population and Economic Growth - England 1209-1869, Economic History Review Vol 60 No1-2007.
(1.491 x 1.43) -1 = 1.13 = 113 percent
(6.19 x 64.8) -1 = 400 = 40,000 percent