Compare And Contrast From Malthusian Stagnation To Modern Growth

Oded Galor and David N. Weil’s work, From Malthusian Stagnation to Modern Growth describes three different regimes on society including population, GDP per capita, family, and lifespan. They are the Malthusian model, the Post Malthusian model, and the Modern Growth Era model. The first of these three was the Malthusian model, developed by Malthus in the late 18th century, the Modern Growth is what we have today, and the post Malthusian model is the transition between the two ends of the spectrum.

The Malthusian model defined human society for much of its history, and only started to break from that model around the time Malthus wrote his works on it. The Malthusian model sees that for thousands of year, the standard of living remained more

Around this time, living standard began to rise more dramatically. This meant that fertility increased while mortality decreased, leading to an overall larger families and higher population. Technology also was increasing much faster than before due to the return for human capital increased. Real wages for a longer living population increased, and along with increased technological advancement, meant that families could invest more into their children. More could afford to send their children to school, and thus feeding into the quickened pace of technological advancement. Another aspect is the falling fertility after the initial surge as families see that their children are surviving more, so they do not need to have nine kids and expect only three to survive. Now they can have two kids and both are likely to grow up. This regime was the transition between the Malthusian model where everything is constant, and the Modern regime that we have

Society barely changed, and when it did, slow technological change meant that society would return to what it had been before the shift. The Modern regime sees a society where families are small, people live longer, women work, and wealth is usually increasing. Finally, the Post-Malthusian regime sees society slowly escape the trap that had held it for thousands of years, but is still not modern. Society sees people live into their forties, technology allows for increased real wages without half the population dying, and families at first explode due to lower mortality rates, but then decrease to the modern standard where small families are the norm. Modern economists are still finding new factors for the transition from the Malthusian society to Modern society, are unlikely to find them