POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW John C. Caldwell Malthus and the less VOLUME 24 NUMBER 4 developed world: The pivotal role of India D E C E M B E R 1 9 9 8 Jere R. Behrman and James C. Knowles Population and reproductive health: An economic framework for policy evaluation Ashley S. Timmer and Jeffrey G. Williamson Immigration policy prior to the 1930s: Labor markets, policy interactions, and globalization backlash Zeba A. Sathar and John B. Casterline The onset of fertility transition in Pakistan Notes and Commentary Population, carbon emissions, and global warming: An exchange Data and Perspectives M.E. Enchautegui on low-skilled immigrants and the changing American labor market Archives Francis Hutcheson on the rights of society Book Reviews Review essays by I. Castles and M. Perlman; reviews by J.R. Wilmoth, T. Dyson, G. Santow, R.D. 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CALDWELL Population and Reproductive Health: An Economic Framework for Policy Evaluation 697 JERE R. BEHRMAN AND JAMES C. KNOWLES Immigration Policy Prior to the 1930s: Labor Markets, Policy Interactions, and Globalization Backlash 739 ASHLEY S. TIMMER AND JEFFREY G. WILLIAMSON The Onset of Fertility Transition in Pakistan 773 ZEBA A. SATHAR AND JOHN B. CASTERLINE NOTES AND COMMENTARY Population, Carbon Emissions, and Global Warming: Comment 797 PAUL DE SA Toward a Per Capita–Based Climate Treaty: Reply 804 FREDERICK A. B. MEYERSON DATA AND PERSPECTIVES Low-Skilled Immigrants and the Changing American Labor Market 811 MARÍA E. ENCHAUTEGUI ARCHIVES Francis Hutcheson on the Rights of Society 825 BOOK REVIEWS The Mismeasure of Nations: A Review Essay on the Human Development Report 1998 IAN CASTLES 831 Styles of Population Economics: A Review Essay on Mark R. Rosenzweig and Oded Stark (eds.), Handbook of Population and Family Economics MARK PERLMAN 846 Henri Leridon and Laurent Toulemon, Démographie: Approche statistique et dynamique des populations and Jean Bourgeois-Pichat, La dynamique des populations: Populations stables, semi-stables et quasi-stables JOHN R. WILMOTH 860 Gavin W. Jones, Robert M. Douglas, John C. Caldwell, and Rennie M. D’Souza (eds.), The Continuing Demographic Transition TIM DYSON 863 John M. Riddle, Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West GIGI SANTOW 869 Ochiai Emiko, The Japanese Family System in Transition: A Sociological Analysis of Family Change in Postwar Japan ROBERT D. RETHERFORD 875 Short Reviews 878 DOCUMENTS Population Aging and the US Federal Budget 885 The 1998 Revision of the United Nations Population Projections 891 ABSTRACTS 897 AUTHORS FOR THIS ISSUE 902 CONTENTS TO VOLUME 24 903 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 909 Malthus and the Less Developed World: The Pivotal Role of India JOHN C. CALDWELL MALTHUS’S IDEAS have survived the two centuries since his First Essay was anonymously published, and they remain an intellectual force to be reck- oned with.1 The purpose of this essay is to identify why this has been the case and to explore the unique role of the English-speaking world and of the connection between Britain and India in determining the survival of the principle of population. First it is necessary to examine the kind of so- ciety that produced the theory and those of its elements that survived time and transplanting. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) was a man of his time but also a man who helped shape his time. John Maynard Keynes (1951: 101) placed him with John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, and William Paley as his predecessors, Jeremy Bentham as his contemporary, and John Stuart Mill and Charles Darwin as his successors “profoundly in the English tradition of humane science, . a tradition marked by a love of truth and a most noble lucidity, by a prosaic sanity free from sentiment or metaphysic, and by an immense disinterestedness and public spirit.” It was essentially a secu- lar tradition, in spite of the fact that Paley and Malthus were Anglican cler- gymen. It was also one in tune with the outlook and interests of the rising commercial middle class. Malthus himself, like most of his contemporaries seeking general social laws, would have added Isaac Newton to this list. Malthus was also in tune with his predecessors in another way that he readily conceded. His argument that population was limited by the avail- ability of food was commonplace in the eighteenth century (Winch 1992: xi), and so he has been attacked as a plagiarist as if this were his sole con- tribution (e.g. Fryer 1965: 70). In fact, his views on the relationship be- tween food and sustenance were expressed much more strikingly than those of other commentators, as well as in a far more significant context. Malthus lived in England at a time when the older mercantilist eco- nomic and demographic policies of protecting domestic production and aug- POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW 24(4):675–696 (DECEMBER 1998) 675 Click to print article Click to return to Table of Contents 676 MALTHUS AND THE LESS DEVELOPED WORLD menting population growth were being successfully attacked. One reason was the growth of Britain as a trading power. Another was the related growth in power of the middle class, to be given political form by the Great Reform Act of 1832. Mercantilism was essentially the program of auto- cratic, centralized states, and lingered longer on the continent. Adam Smith (1723–90) had enunciated a new economics, suited to emerging capitalist Britain, in 1776 in his Wealth of Nations. But his work lacked the major population component that was subsequently produced by Malthus. The two doctrines complemented each other and provided a “liberal” political agenda. Malthus wrote the First Essay during a decade when population probably grew at twice the rate that had been the case during the decade when the Wealth of Nations was written (12 percent decadal growth com- pared with 6 percent, according to G. Talbot Griffith’s estimates; see Mitchell and Deane 1962: 5). England had a Poor Law, codified in Elizabethan times, whereby magistrates spent parish rates meeting the needs of destitutes. Uniquely, this allowed a monetary estimate to be put on the cost of pro- viding for the very poor and the additional cost imposed by their children.