To this point, at least, Malthus's theory of population
has not been accurate. Malthus believed that the world's population would tend to grow
too rapidly to be sustainable. He said that the poorer people would end up without
enough food and that populations would therefore crash. In other words, he posited a
sort of situation in which populations are kept relatively low by the lack of
food.
So far, we have not reached this point. Our
technological ability to produce more and more food has so far made it possible to
sustain a population much larger than Malthus imagined
possible.
This is not to say that he will not some day be
right. It is possible that we will run out of technological advances and our food
production will stop growing. However, this has not yet happened and so Malthus appears
to be incorrect.
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