Malthus

(One thing I could not determine was his birth and death date.  The birth date was caught between February 13/14, 1766.  The death date was caught between December 23/29, 1834.)

Thomas Robert Malthus was an English economist.  He usually went by his middle name Robert.  Malthus was home-schooled.  That is until college when he attended Cambridge University.  He received his master's degree in 1791.  Malthus had a wife named Harriet.  He also had one son and two daughters.  (Henry, Emily, and Lucy.)  Malthus was intrigued by the concept of population.  He thought of ideas about births, deaths, age of marriage and childbearing.  He wanted to connect the idea of population and food supply.  In Malthus's eyes people thought it was easier to increase food supply by doing things by reclaiming un-used farming land.  However, Malthus believed it would just be easier to "check" on birthing rates and to limit that.  They can track the population.  One thing he found very interesting was how people did not die off in such overwhelming circumstances.  In 1798, Malthus's work 'An Essay on the Principle of Population' was published.  The main points he made were opposing the current thinking of that time.  One of his arguments was that, the increases in population would eventually stop the worlds ability to feed itself.  At the rate he was talking, population was overtaking food and population would be counted by the rise in death rates.  While this piece caught the eye of his economists in a positive way, it caught the eye of non economists as well.  It caused such an uproar with the non economists that the good and important ideas were just overlooked.  He believed that the population would expand to the point of losing the land and space needed to grow crops.  Food can only grow by ones.  Whereas, the population can grow in multiples, because people do not always have one child at a time.  Most a Malthus's theories were misinterpreted, but then became popular again in 20th century.  In 1805, Malthus became a professor.  He taught history and political economy at East India Company's college.  He remained a professor there until he died.  Malthus believed a family should hold off on marriage until they could financially support their own family.  He did believe the types of birthcontrol there was was immoral.  Malthus thought that people who reproduced and were unable to support their faily as well were to to blame.  Therefore, he opposes the "poor laws".  Today, Malthus is one of the most misrepresented and misinterpreted economist of all time.  His theories are thought as pessimistic, looking at population versus starvation.  Writing all of this before the Industrial Revolution, Malthus did not understand the technology for food growth and restoration.  Today we still hear some oof the ideas of Malthus, such as, population causes poverty.  

I did some research on a website that has been accurate with other peoples quotes before.

(http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_malthus.html)

 Here are some quotes of Thomas Robert Malthus:

- "Population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a geometrical ratio."
- "It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment."
- "A great emigration necessarily implies unhappiness of some kind or other in the country that is deserted."

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Malthus.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/malthus_thomas.shtml