| Thomas Malthus’s studies on the growth of population led to the development of the field of demography. Malthus believed that the population would naturally increase faster than the amount of food that could be produced to feed them. He advocated sexual abstinence or restraint to control population increases and acknowledged the role of plagues, wars, and epidemics in containing overpopulation. Malthus specifically suggested that people marry later and have small families. These ideas earned economics its name as “the dismal science”. |
