Today in 1766 Thomas Malthus was born. Malthus' most well known work 'An Essay on the Principle of Population' was published in 1798. Malthus was a British scholar, influential in political economy and demography.He argued that increases in population would mean that people would become unable to feed ithemselves and based this conclusion on the thesis that populations expand in such a way as to overtake the development of sufficient land for crops. This idea has went in and out of favour over the years but often people write about ideas being 'Malthusian' and this is where that term comes from.
