Beginning of Essay
In 1798 Thomas Robert Malthus, a British clergyman and professor, wrote an essay showing the way to modern demography. In 1824 he wrote a shorter final version, the article on population for that year's Encyclopedia Britannica. Malthus has been criticized for hi ....

Middle of Essay
.... subtract from natural rates of population growth, thus revealing net reproductive growth. Malthus observed that under such ideal conditions, during each 25 years the human population tends to double. So if world population is represented by 1, then after each 25 years it would be 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and so on, provided there were no limits on such "natural" rates of population increase. Food. To learn how fast people might produce food, Malthus examined agriculture in several countries, and made a rough estimate: all food produced could increase each 25 years by at most the prior 25 years' increase. So if food production is represented by 1, t ....