Population and development: Malthus versus Boserup

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Population and development Malthus versus
Boserup

• BIAN2120/DEMO8024
• Lecture 5
• Robert Attenborough

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Theories for situations of population stasis

• I.e. of little or no population size change over
  long periods, slow growth at most
• This may or may not mean equilibrium
• Peter McDonald reviewed theories for this last
  time homeostasis versus chaos
• On a homeostasis model, feedback loops control
  any tendency to growth or decline
• On chaos model, no such systematic control is at
  work instead, extrinsic factors

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Today, older theories for newer situations

• Situations of dramatic population change
• Also of radically changed patterns of society
  economy in many regions
• Development modernization over the last 250
  years or less
• Somehow population has escaped homeostatic
  control, if there was any
• Popn also interacts in complex ways with
  economic development what causes what?

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Is population growth good or bad for economic
development?

• Bad Thomas Malthus
• Good Julian Simon technological optimism
  people are the ultimate resource
• Neutral Esther Boserup greater density of
  population leads to technological change
• These are not politically neutral ideas
• Malthusian neo-Malthusian can be terms of
  abuse but what did Malthus say?

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The Reverend Professor T.R. Malthus (1766-1834)

• A mathematician, a clergyman, and Britains first
  professor of political economy
• Also father of demography its theory
• One of the most influential thinkers of his day,
  which was a period of hectic social change
  Industrial Revolution, Poor Laws
• Provided one of the critical influences on
  Darwins thinking, hence on biology too

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Malthuss An Essay on the Principle of
Population (1798)

• First edition proposed a quite stark simple
  model, drew social policy conclusions from it
• Perhaps for that reason, it had a dramatic impact
  on public debates
• Nonetheless, it was quite a sketchy theory
• Second and later versions were more nuanced in
  argument, much better supported evidentially -
  less interesting

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Malthus started from two postulata

• 1. Food is necessary for survival
• 2. The passion between the sexes is necessary
  and will remain in its present condition
• From these he asserted that population growth
  would always have the potential to outpace
  economic growth
• (Heres the link to Darwin though its a
  side-issue in the present context)

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Thus some check must limit population growth

• Accordingly, Malthus saw two ways to keep
  population and resources in balance
• 1 the positive check mortality deaths
• 2 the preventive check nuptiality
  marriages, or rather constraints on them
• He ruled out contraception as immoral

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Positive and preventive checks

• Positive check
• Population size rises
• Real income falls
• Mortality increases (poorer diets living
  conditions)
• Population size falls

• Preventive check
• Population size rises
• Real income falls
• Marriages are postponed (they become
  unaffordable)
• Fertility falls
• Population size falls

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Malthus had very limited access to relevant data

• Economic history (Phelps-Brown Hopkins)
  historical demography (Wrigley Schofield) now
  allow a much fuller assessment of, say, the
  English historical data than Malthus himself
  could make
• P-B H produced real wages index based on wages
  of building workers price of food
• W S inferred demography from parish registers

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English results show

• a clear link between marriage real wages
• no clear link between mortality real wages
• Thus Malthus did appear to have captured an
  important facet of his own society
• And the preventive check was predominant
• However, Malthus wrote when England was entering
  the Industrial Revolution the relation between
  economy demography, including the links he
  stated, was changing radically

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Thus Malthus was in a way successful

• But his model took some aspects of society,
  economy, agriculture etc. as static
• They were then undergoing rapid change, so his
  model described the past better than the future
• The model does not handle change well
• This is perhaps partly why he has subsequently
  been seen as conservative
• Malthusian sometimes even used to mean opposed
  to social improvement which would be a
  distortion even of TRMs crudest version

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Need to incorporate social change in population
models

• What is the rôle of population dynamics in
  situations of complex social, economic
  technological change?
• Such situations may be those of globalization in
  the present day
• Or economic development, modernization
• Or 19th-century industrialization
• Or even earlier changes agriculture
  urbanization

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Ester Boserup first book 1965

• Danish agricultural economist, with field
  experience in India other Asian countries
• Interested in the interaction between population
  growth and innovation, e.g. in agricultural
  practice technology
• Although neither a demographer nor an
  anthropologist or archaeologist, she has proved
  to be an important influence on all

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Archaeological background

• How does past population growth relate to social,
  cultural, economic, technical change, e.g.
  agriculture, urbanization?
• Archaeologists e.g. Childe had often taken the
  benefits of such changes to be obvious
• Assumed they would be implemented as soon as
  society was advanced enough
• Population growth would then follow

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Boserup archaeology

• Boserups implication for archaeology was to turn
  previous assumption on its head
• Population growth was not so much the end-product
  of social technical change
• Rather, population growth was an extrinsic
  pressure, driving changes which otherwise might
  not have happened
• Far-reaching implications for archaeology
  anthropology, still being explored

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So what did Boserup actually say?

• When a population is over-crowded, it evolves new
  forms of agriculture
• High density of population is neutral, neither
  good nor bad, but usually needed for development
  of new techniques
• With historical change, humankind has moved
  through a series of increasingly intensive
  agricultural systems
• Each requires supports more people

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Stages of agricultural development

• Gathering always fallow
• Forest fallow 1-2 crops, 15-25 yrs fallow
• Bush fallow 4-6 crops, 8-10 yrs fallow
• Short fallow 1-2 crops, 1 yr fallow
• Annual cropping 1 crop, lt1 yr fallow
• Multi-cropping 2 crops, no fallow yrs
• What triggers adoption of new methods?
• New methods may require social change

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Testing Boserup

• No long-run data series like Wrigley
  Schofields for Malthus is available for testing
  Boserups model
• Nonetheless specific examples often support the
  propositions such as farmers generally have to
  do more subsistence work than hunter-gatherers
  work further increases with intensification of
  agriculture

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Synthesis

• Agricultural change is only part of a wider
  more complex picture of development
• When agricultural productivity comes from
  mechanization, as often nowadays, it is
  capital-intensive, not labour-intensive
• Nonetheless Malthus Boserup have both
  contributed stimulating models insights
• Lee (1986) Wood (1998) have both put the two
  together into overall models of population
  dynamics, seeing them as complementary