What is the myth of overpopulation? The lines and squares abstract background The myth of overpopulation is an unfounded belief that: the number of people on Earth will exceed the carrying capacity of the planet in the foreseeable future, leading to economic or social collapse, and that actions ought to be taken to curb population growth. Population alarmists who buy into the overpopulation myth believe that the world’s growing population will strip the Earth of its useable resources and will outpace innovation and rates of production. This, they believe, will cause diminishing standards of living, more poverty, more hunger, famine and starvation, water shortages, pestilence, war and conflict over diminishing resources, the evisceration of wildlife habitats, and environmental catastrophes (i.e. global climate change). Where did the overpopulation myth come from? In 1798, an Anglican minister by the name of Thomas Malthus published the first edition of his An Essay on the Principle of Population where he speculated that, under perfect economic conditions, humans reproduce exponentially while their ability to increase agricultural output increases only linearly at best. Malthus theorized that there were two kinds of “checks” that kept the population growth rate in check with the food supply: This March 28 Malthus falsely believed that population checks were necessary to prevent the proliferation of poverty and to prevent catastrophic war, famine, and epidemics caused by overpopulation—a phenomenon known as ‘Malthusian catastrophe.’ Subsequent editions of Malthus’ Essay were widely read among the upper classes in Europe, many of whom bought into the false belief that high birth rates among the poor would overwhelm Western society and lead to war, famine and poverty. Malthus’ ideas quickly became the foundation for a movement that began to preach population control and contraception as the keys to socioeconomic development and the betterment of Western society. Although Malthus himself generally opposed on religious grounds the use of birth control and abortion as methods of population control, his followers—the Neo-Malthusians—had no such concerns. Neo-Malthusianism became the first movement in the Western world to publicly advocate for practicing birth control—a practice at that time still widely condemned by society as obscene and immoral. https://www.pop.org/overpopulation-myth/ https://www.ortl.org/