Malthusian problem

Malthusian problem
The fear of economists that per capita incomes would be driven down to subsistence level by a tendency for population to grow faster than output. This was named after the eigtheenth-century UK economist T. R. Malthus. For much of the world this problem has been kept at bay for the last two centuries by a combination of geographical discoveries, technical progress, and falling birthrates. The experience of Sub-Saharan Africa in recent decades, however, shows that the problem is not extinct.