Thomas Malthus was an 18th-century economist best known for his theories about population growth. Learn more about overpopulation and the Malthusian growth model.

Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) was an ordained minister who became interested in various themes in political economy, and became famous for arguing against the theories espoused by William Godwin. His ...

Over the past five years, the world's population has risen by roughly 80 million people annually, reaching an estimated 6.8 billion in 2009. Barring a sudden reversal in demographic trends, more ...

Thomas Robert Malthus was born with a harelip and is said to have refused to have his portrait painted for many years. He rose to become one of the most eminent men of his day, ...

More than 225 years ago, prominent English scholar and political economist Thomas Malthus made one of history’s most spectacularly wrong predictions: continuous population growth arising from ...

Two centuries ago an English philosopher named Thomas Malthus reached some nightmarish conclusions about the future of humanity that guaranteed him an immortal role in one of the most emotionally ...

One of the more wrong-headed predictions of a famous 19 century thinker, Thomas Malthus, was that because world population would grow more rapidly than food production, mankind faced a bleak ...

You’d think after 200 years, folks would eventually say, “That Malthus guy? Kind of wrong.” Yet, with the (projected) birth today of the world’s 7 billionth occupant, there’s no shortage ...

Paul Krugman says he's been getting hatemail calling him the new Thomas Malthus. (Which actually strikes me as pretty thoughtful, high-minded hatemail.) Paul responds by pointing out that Thomas ...