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The Law of Population and the Austrian School
Author(s) -
Barrows Stephen P.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
american journal of economics and sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.199
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1536-7150
pISSN - 0002-9246
DOI - 10.1111/j.1536-7150.2010.00740.x
Subject(s) - subsistence agriculture , population , population growth , limiting , work (physics) , economics , law , sociology , development economics , political science , geography , demography , agriculture , engineering , archaeology , mechanical engineering
A bstract There has been considerable debate within the social sciences about the consequences of rapid population growth. The law of population, as described by Thomas Robert Malthus, asserts that population growth is ultimately limited by the means of subsistence, and therefore preventive checks on population growth (e.g., voluntarily limiting the number of births) are necessary to avoid the grim prospect of inevitable human suffering when the means of subsistence cannot support the population. Economists, demographers, and other social scientists have produced volumes of exegesis on Malthus's work. This article assesses how representative economists of the Austrian School have interacted with Malthus's law of population.