Malthus and Boserup Population Theory

MALTHUS AND BOSERUP The world universe is the total number of living hu creations on the planet Earth. Recently the world has just hit oer 7 billion people. It is expected that if the worlds tribe continues to increase at the rate it is doing nowadays, and so we bequeath become overpopulated. Over macrocosm is where an organisms numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. There ar various views on this population crisis and throughout this essay I provide describe theses views. Thomas Malthus was a pessimist , his surmise is that the growth of human populations everlastingly tends to outstrip the productive capabilities of land resources.The result is that resources place a confinement on population growth and size and coercive checks (famine and disease) or load checks (limitation of family size) constitute to reduce population growth. Writing before the agricultural revolution, Malthus presumed that the productiveness of resources were permanent because agricult ural technology was largely fixed. From a Malthusian perspective, technology and environment (considered in terms of land resources) atomic number 18 therefore seen as independent variables that work together to determine the dependant variable of population, which he sees mainly in terms of population growth and size.According to him, human rules of order could never be perfected. He believed that man is a lazy animal, who would overhaul a satisfied life and procreate as long as his family was well fed. However, as soon as human population would emotional state constraints in diet supplying due to increase in population, he would again work hard to provide enough for his family. This might make it to an increase in agricultural takings to provide for all(prenominal), but at the same time man would be back to his complacent stage, where all his needs would be fulfilled. This would start the cycle of overpopulation and food shortage, all over again.Having been a clergy, Mal thus validated his hypothesis on moral grounds that hurt was a way of devising human beings realize the virtues of hard work and moral behavior. Such kind of suffering due to overpopulation and food supply was inevitable. Malthus theory had great influence on both Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, who ar the co-founders of the neo evolutionary theory. By the end of the 19th Century, when living standards improved and fork out rates dropped in the Western countries, concerns of overpopulation became irrelevant.However, in underdeveloped countries which aim farming(prenominal) economies, Malthus theory often finds credibility. On the other hand, Ester Boserup was an optimist. Her theory focuses on the relationships among three factors population, environment and technology. Her concept of population in contrast to Malthus, encompasses population density as well as population size and growth. Ester Boserup tell that an increase in population would stimulate technologists to i ncrease food production.As Boserup state any elevate in population would increase demand for food and this would act as an incentive to change agrarian technology and adduce more food. Therefore population growth go out inspire innovators who ordain solve the problem s the increasing population has caused therefore making it sustainable for a growing population. Even though they are cardinal opposing theories they do have some similarities. They are both found on closed communities which at a global scale is not true. They are similar by the way they both agree that an rise in population will increase demand for food.However they completely protest on what the consequences will be. As Malthus says change magnitude demand for food will eventually cause food production to decrease due to the virtue of diminishing returns. As Boserup has a completely opposing view that increased population would increase food production. We have to remember that Malthus wrote his essay in 179 8 before the agriculture revolution therefore he excluded technology from his theory therefore making it slightly inaccurate. As Boserup wrote her theory in 1968 and has seen the imprint technology shag have crop yield therefore the two theories contrast.Also Mathus and Boserup disagree on the outcomes of increased population as Malthus stated that population nookiet increase above the food supplies otherwise positive checks would occur. Malthus dialog about controlling a population by preventative checks and how the population must be kept below the crisis point otherwise these positive checks will occur. In contrast Boserup does the opposite and stated that famine and struggle will be prevented by human solutions. Therefore the two theories have different answers as to how to make a sustainable population which will survive in food resources.I personally agree with Malthus and believe that the force-out of population is much greater than the power of the earth to provide sub sistence for man although Boserup states that an increase in population would stimulate technologists to increase food production etc. There is only a limit of resources available that can be used and the use of new technology and manufacturing is a big contributor to the green house effect. Also we cannot rely on an increases in population to stimulate people to find new ways so that we can live sustainably.Some people may argue that positive checks are meant to happen. I dont believe in parts of this theory however if we can reduce the population to a sustainable level then these positive checks will not have to take place. We can reduce positive checks by encouraging people to have fewer children however this has been taken a bit too far in some areas, for example Chinas One Child Policy. Although this was a massive achievement in reducing the population, there are also problems that China is now faced with including gender imbalance (for every 6 males there are 5 females) and an ageing population.