The Malthusian Trap (or “Malthusian Population Trap”) is the idea that higher levels of food production created by more advanced agricultural techniques create higher population levels, which then lead to food shortages because the higher population needs to live on land that would have previously...
easier to prove that each cause was insufficient; even combined they could not be shown to lead to the decline that was to be explained. In attempting to find an explanation I have adopted several strategies. Having dealt with war and famine as two parts of the mortality pattern, I decided...