What did economist Thomas Malthus argue about population growth?

Question

A. Governments should provide social services to the poor by taxing those who do not need these services.

B. Bigger populations are good for the economy because they supply more labor and help industry grow.

C. Population will always grow faster than the food supply, leading to periods of overpopulation, war, and famine.

D. Unless the government encourages people to have children, the population will decline over time.

Answer 1

Malthus thought that population would grow exponentially while food production could only grow arithmetically.  (The resulting famines would in fact reduce population growth to zero or below.) For most of the last 200 years, for most of the world, Malthus was wrong about both.

Answer 2

C.         It turned out that he was wrong.  Tractors and harvesters allow us to produce much more food with the same amount of farmland.  We grow healthier crops and have better supplies of seed.  We have fertilizer.

That doesn't mean that our increasing populations aren't a strain on resources everywhere.