Economics

1. The Malthusian position on fertility and economics is distorted to some degree due to the time period in which Thomas Malthus wrote. His research and writings took place in the early 1800’s and this was a time period in which controlling fertility through contraception had not been fully accomplished. However, it is interesting to see what Malthus had in mind, because it preceded the “new” approach of the 1960’s. With that said, it is easier to distinguish the two approaches and it is easier to make sense of what each was trying to convey.

Malthus believed that young men and women tended to marry as soon as a young man could earn enough to support a family. Today, this belief would be somewhat out dated due to the fact that women are becoming more and more of an economic factor in relationships. Malthus also believed that soon after the marriage of the two young people births would follow the course of “natural fertility,” which is roughly the birth rate that would take place if there was no contraception or if abstinence was not practiced. Today, it seems that if people get married at a young age it is because the female is pregnant. Also, there is a growing trend today of people getting married and waiting to have children, or people waiting longer to get married, thus waiting to have children also. Due to the time in which we live as opposed to the time in which Malthus lived, people’s ways of thinking and living have changed a great deal. With the introduction of the pill in the 1960’s, those who wanted to get married at an early age, but not have children soon after marriage could do so.

Economically speaking, Malthus argued that higher incomes would encourage earlier marriages. He also believed that this would lead to more births because of fertility taking place at a younger age and natural fertility taking place over a longer period of time. Today, I think this is still somewhat plausible. However, to some degree higher income people today seem to stay away from marriage and fertility at least until careers have finished and/or financial stability has been accomplished. When Malthus talks about wage rates in relation to population, birth, and mortality rates this is when his writings seem not so convincing. Today, rising wage rates would cause the population to grow as the birth rate increased and the mortality rate fell. However, Malthus argues that the wage rate depends negatively on the size of the population due to supply and demand analysis. He believed that a larger population would yield a larger supply of labor and, if the demand for labor was constant, the equilibrium wage would decrease. Once again, times have changed and peoples lifestyles have changed and this as resulted in a “new world” so to speak. Thus, the Malthusian style today would not be reliable in most cases.

All in all, what is interesting and important about the Malthus approach is that for the first time he incorporated a link between the wage rate and fertility. However, the weakness, and ultimate failure of his writings was with the mechanical nature of the relationship between the economic variables (wage rate, labor market) and fertility. With his approach decisions are made about when to marry, and the wage affects that decision. However, once married, there is no explicit decision about fertility. In conclusion, there is no direct effect of the wage on fertility, only an indirect effect due to age at marriage. Nevertheless, according to Malthus, fertility is not looked at as something married couples choose to engage in. However, in today’s world that is exactly what the economic approach to fertility talks about. With that said, the Malthusian position on fertility and economics is not convincing. Its not that Malthus was wrong in his writings so much as it is the change that has taken place in fertility and economics since the 1960’s.

2 The main problem discussed in the article “Europe’s population implosion; Charlemagne”