According to Malthus, human beings are condemned to poverty. Why?

Answer & explanation

Correct answer: option 4

The correct answer is Option (4) → Population grows in geometric progression and overcomes agricultural production, which grows in arithmetic progression.

Option (1) Population grows in arithmetic progression and agricultural production grows in geometric progression. — Incorrect. The two progressions are swapped. If food grew faster than people, there would be no reason for poverty at all.

Option (2) Population suffers from positive checks, like famine. — Incorrect. Positive checks, famines and diseases, are what follows the imbalance: nature’s way of dealing with it. They are a result of the imbalance, not the reason humanity is condemned to poverty.

Option (3) Population suffers from preventive checks, like late marriage. — Incorrect. Preventive checks, such as postponing marriage or abstinence, are the voluntary ways of reducing population growth. Malthus thought humanity could use them only to a limited extent; they are a possible remedy, not the cause of poverty.

Option (4) Population grows in geometric progression and overcomes agricultural production, which grows in arithmetic progression. — Correct. For Malthus, population rises in geometric progression (2, 4, 8, 16, 32) while agricultural production grows only in arithmetic progression (2, 4, 6, 8, 10). Population growth therefore always outstrips the growth of food, so humanity is condemned to live in poverty unless population is controlled.

NCERT (2025-26): “The Malthusian Theory of Population Growth … Among the most famous theories of demography is the one associated with the English political economist Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834). Malthus’s theory of population growth – outlined in his Essay on Population (1798) – was a rather pessimistic one. He argued that human populations tend to grow at a much faster rate than the rate at which the means of human subsistence (specially food, but also clothing and other agriculture-based products) can grow. Therefore humanity is condemned to live in poverty forever because the growth of agricultural production will always be overtaken by population growth. While population rises in geometric progression (i.e., like 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.), agricultural production can only grow in arithmetic progression (i.e., like 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, etc.). Because population growth always outstrips growth in production of subsistence resources, the only way to increase prosperity is by controlling the growth of population. Unfortunately, humanity has only a limited ability to voluntarily reduce the growth of its population (through ‘preventive checks’ such as postponing marriage or practicing sexual abstinence or celibacy). Malthus believed therefore that ‘positive checks’ to population growth – in the form of famines and diseases – were inevitable because they were nature’s way of dealing with the imbalance between food supply and increasing population.…”