SOCI 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Malthusian Trap, The Population Bomb, Crop Yield
3 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Demography & Population
3rd question clarification:
• Pertaining to culture and power
o Culture, power, and the myth of being homogenous
o Example: nationalism is a cultural product, the myth that nationalism is
homogenous
▪ Myth of homogenous package cultures
▪ Erases diversity
Malthus:
• Concerned about growing number of poor people
• Uncontrolled reproduction was a serious problem: compared humans to rabbits
• Huas ould reprodue geoetrially, apale of doulig population every 25 years,
but the land on earth is finite and at best it could be coaxed into producing small
aritheti ireases i food
o Implication: pessimistic, we are doomed
• Population grows exponentially even if number of children in families remain constant
o Even if we did have technology, the land is the issue cannot expand beyond
our means
▪ Production of food is linear (land is limiting)
o Humans: wars happening, revolt, prices increase, famines
▪ These would reduce the population (catastrophe), but then we would
increase again (repeating)
▪ Stuck in Malthusian trap
• He did not consider how technology can improve food supply
o Does not consider the increase in income, technological advance, increase in
food supply
o Industrial revolution: yielded higher crop yield in the global south
• The idea that we will have this geometric increase forever:
Modern Malthusianism
• Paul Ehrlich: unsustained population growth, questioning unsustained GDP growth
o Extends into natural resources: finite oil, resources
o Catastrophe is inevitable
o Wrote The Population Bomb. Failures:
▪ India could not feed people (has become a food exporter)
▪ Mass starvation in the 70s
▪ Long term wheat yields increase in Europe
o Support
▪ Land becoming unusable
▪ Green revolutions short comings
▪ More food is consumed than produced
• The optimists are winning
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