TODAY’S ARTICLE ON MALTHUS.

August 7, 2007 at 12:30 PM · Economics, History

TODAY’S ARTICLE ON MALTHUS. Today’s New York Times has this article on Malthus, in the form of a review of A FAREWELL TO ALMS, by Gregory Clark, which will be published next month. The link will disappear soon. The book is based on extensive research on English wills. It argues that England was trapped in a Malthusian trap from 1200 to 1800, and that what enabled England to escape the trap (the Industrial Revolution) was a change in cultural attitudes: “The middle-class values of nonviolence, literacy, long working hours and a willingness to save emerged only recently in human history, Dr. Clark argues.” This explanation should be contrasted with the currently popular theory that it was a series of changes in institutions that led to the Industrial Revolution. Clark says that calorie consumption in England in 1790 was no greater than that of primitive hunter-gatherers. Clark offers two different possible explanations for the changes he describes (“’Thrift, prudence, negotiation and hard work were becoming values for communities that previously had been spendthrift, impulsive, violent and leisure loving,’” Dr. Clark writes.) One theory is based on his archival research which shows that in England, unlike other countries, the rich had more surviving children than the poor so that there was continuing downward social mobility. The other theory is more speculative, that there may have been a genetic change which influenced certain cultural attitudes.