Question

The text defines the Malthusian trap as: “A point at which the world is no longer able to meet the food requirements of the population, and starvation becomes the primary check to population growth.” In other words, population will outpace food production.

Discuss whether you believe this trap has been avoided for the next 100 years. Consider government policies (like China’s one-child policy), the use of genetically engineered crops, social patterns of family size, and environmental factors.

Answer 1

Malthusian trap related to population where population tends to outpace production of crops. So eventually, population will go down in future. Population growth can not be larger than the growth of crop. Population rises at geometric term whilst crop rises at arithmetic term.

Although postulate of population trap was sensible, it was proved wrong over the next few years. Malthusian trap did not consider technological development that could increase production of food and agricultural items multiple times. Government made expenditure on development of genetically modified crops, that raised the level of output multiple times. Thus, future was able to prove that malthusian predictions was wrong. furthermore, many countries even imposed restrictions on population growth. One child policy in china was pursued to drive up economic growth. it was beneficial over the short run, but over the long run, it caused some negative repercussions.

Further, as the growth picked up, people started preferring small size of population. Thus, it also put restraint on population growth.