LIMITATIONS OF MALTHUSIAN POPULATION THEORY

To a greater extent, the Malthusian population theory is of limited relevance or  to developing countries in the following ways:

1. He assumed that resources e.g. land are fixed and therefore food production cannot increase faster than population but ignored that the quality of resources can be improved.
2. He ignored the fact that improvement in technology lead to increase in food production with use of agricultural mechanization and irrigation.
3. The ignored the fact that continuous supply of food can obtained from international trade.
4. He assumed that food is the only determinant of population growth; yet there are other factors such as immigration, levels of education, and cultural beliefs. For instance the modern medicine and public health programs have reduced the death rate and therefore population increase does not show a define relationship with income per capita
5. Foreign aid may not necessarily increase population in LDCs, because not all foreign aids are used in food production
6. Malthus never indicated the time when the population trap would occur which means the theory is in waiting for the reality to occur.
7. Malthus did not realize that rising living standards can cause a fall in birth rates and population growth. The theory assumes that national rates of population growth increase are positively related to the levels of national income. Therefore, as national income increases, population growth rates also increase yet in many countries as national income increases, birth rates have tended to fall.
8. The theory was developed in Britain and has never been experimented in LDCs like Uganda and probably not substantial.
9. The theory did not foresee great improvement in transport that makes it possible to transfer food from areas of plenty to areas of scarcity hence developing countries can offset the problems of food shortages.
10. There is no mathematical relation as regards growth in food and population. There is no proof to show that population increases in a geometric progression and food production increase in an arithmetic progression.
11. It ignored the possibility emigration to ease pressure on resources. People emigrate from countries which are densely populated to countries which are less populated resulting into reduced pressure on resources in the overpopulated countries.
12. Failure of the theory to visualize (foresee) the possibility of labour mobility from areas where opportunities are limited to areas where high wage employment opportunities exist.
13. The theory is based on the subsistence economy yet modern economies of developing countries are not predominantly subsistence any longer. Commercialization of production leads to specialization and increased output for exchange thus averting any possibility of shortages in food supply. This too was not envisaged by the theory.
14. The theory ignored the deliberate and scientific methods of birth control. Malthus did not foresee the possibility of applying modern family planning methods like use of condoms, vasectomy and contraceptive pills to reduce on population increase.
15. Malthus was influenced by the law of diminishing returns which is not always true. At times increasing amount of a variable factor, labour, to a fixed factor, land, results in increasing and constant returns not diminishing returns as the theory assumed.