Population
Malthus writes, “In the United States of America, where the means of subsistence have been more ample, the manners of the people more pure, and consequently the checks to early marriages fewer, than in any of the modern states of Europe, the population has been found to double itself in twenty-five years.” Population doubling is attributed to the availability of subsistence. Subsistence guarantees availability of livelihoods for new families; hence, it encourages people to procreate resulting in the expansion of population.
Fertility
Malthus expounds, “When we are assured that China is the most fertile country in the world, that almost all the land is in tillage, and that a great part of it bears two crops every year, and further, that the people live very frugally, we may infer with certainty that the population must be immense, without busying ourselves in inquiries into the manners and habits of the lower classes and the encouragements to early marriages.” Fertility denotes the productivity of China’s land which enables it to sustain its mass population. However, the fertile land is not sufficient to cater for the entire population. Frugal lifestyles mean that the production of food from the land is not sufficient to encourage a comfortable lifestyle for all classes of people.
Agriculture
Malthus explains, “And on account of the extreme cheapness of good land a capital could not be more advantageously employed than in agriculture, which at the same time that it supplies the greatest quantity of healthy work affords much the most valuable produce to the society. The consequence of these favourable circumstances united was a rapidity of increase probably without parallel in history.” Malthus implies that there is a correlation between Agriculture and population increase. Agricultural undertakings yielded food which sustained populations in the American colonies. Accordingly, without land, agriculture would not have thrived and population would not double.
