The use of modern analytical demography by T. R. Malthus

Abstract

Summary Malthus asserted that the population of the North American colonies, and later, that of the United States, doubled in no more than 25 years, showing the tendency for rapid geometric increase when the checks to population were minimal. In his entry on ‘Population’ in the 1824 supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, he employed a surprisingly modern type of demographic analysis, including stable population techniques, to prove that such a rate of increase had occurred by procreation after due allowance for migration.