Marquis de Condorcet lived from 1743- 1794 and was elected president of the legislative assembly in France during the early stages of the French revolution. He learned about economics primarily from Adam Smiths book called the Wealth of Nations and developed some of his own theories. One of the big topics for these pages was that of population grow. Condorcet was well aware of the rapid growth of the countries of France and England, but was not worried about it. He argued that not only will the same amount of ground support more people, but everyone will have less work to do and will be able to produce more and be happier. But after he was killed, two men named T.R. Malthus and David Ricardo came along with different view point on the matter. They argued that eventually, the population of the human race would become so large that the earth would not have enough resources to support them. Instead of birthrates going down with wealth, they will increase. Ricardo eventually took it a little further and applied it to the three economic classes of land, labor and capital; producing the theory of diminishing returns which we still use today.
D for Tim. Mistakes like "Smiths book", "population grow", and "with different view point" are not acceptable. I'll let you slide on not capitalizing Earth; it's trendy not to.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that population went up so much in the late 18th century. Is this because people were having more kids, or because adults were not dying off as quickly? Warsh doesn't provide an answer for that. But, contemporary history does. England in 1800 was just above subsistence level - and so not that different from Sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia in the 1970's. In those countries, what we observed first was adults living longer, but continuing to have kids at the same rate - so population spiked. After a generation or so, people realize that it is more likely that their kids will live to adulthood, so they start having fewer of them.
Condorcet was clearly envisioning increasing returns to scale in agriculture, although he didn't have a theory behind that.
Condorcet was right about population growth rates. They do decline with income and wealth, as parents substitute quality for quantity.
BTW: When we get into actually writing out a growth theory model, we won't add this feature, since it adds quite a bit of work.
FYI: Current family sizes in Utah (which are the highest of the 50 states) would have been the lowest of the 50 states two generations ago.