Thomas Robert Malthus

English Christian priest and political economist (1766–1834)

Thomas Robert Malthus (13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834) was an English economist, Christian priest, and scholar influential in the fields of political economy and demography. In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the population, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to use abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view and stance that has become known as the "Malthusian trap" or the "Malthusian spectre".

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