Demography and the Limits to Growth

WHEN GOODS INCREASE, THEY ARE INCREASED THAT EAT THEM. These words of the Bible (Ecclesiastes 5: 1 1) present a theory of population growth, unmistakably Malthusian in cast. They assert that expansion in human numbers is conditioned by the material environment not only in a permissive sense but is also mandated by it. The formulation, which displays an economy of expression that even mathematically inclined social scientists can envy, draws attention to two central issues of demography. First, what are the limits to population growth imposed by nature? Goods can increase by human exertion-to each mouth belong two hands and a brain-but in a closed system the fruits of such exertion are constrained by the availability of natural resources. Second, how close is the correspondence between population growth that is permitted by the limits of the resource environment and population growth that actually takes place? Can population increase lag behind the increase of goods so that each person can eat more? This essay will not try to tackle these difficult and stubbornly unresolved questions. Its far more limited objective is to offer a broad-brush picture of theories, empirical findings, and intellectual debates in the field of that have attempted to answer them. In pursuing that objective, it would be quite inappropriate to hew to a narrow definition of and to focus single-mindedly on the thinking of social scientists identified professionally as demographers. The issues at hand are far too important to have remained unexamined until the very recent emergence of as a separate social science discipline. The word denoting that discipline in its original French version did not exist until 1855 (Kirk, 1968: 342); the first written English uses of the terms demography and occurred, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, in 1880 and 1882. These dates, of course, are mere reference points for early linguistic coinage: it was well into the twentieth century before grew to be a recognized specialty within the social sciences and being a demographer became a plausible full-time occupation. Thus, at least prior to World War II, much of the intellectual effort that went into examining the issues noted above was carried out by part-time demographers: social scientists-at-large exercised by