Malthus argued that the population grows in a ______ progression, while agricultural production/food supply grows in a ______ progression.
From the following options, choose the correct answer to fill

Question

Malthus argued that the population grows in a ______ progression, while agricultural production/food supply grows in a ______ progression.
From the following options, choose the correct answer to fill in the blanks :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, Geometric, Arithmetic. This is Thomas Robert Malthus's own vocabulary, and the question is quoting him. In An Essay on the Principle of Population, first published anonymously in 1798, he wrote that population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio, while subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. The two named progressions are what make the argument bite. A geometric progression multiplies by a fixed ratio at each step — 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 — so it doubles over a constant interval; an arithmetic progression adds a fixed difference — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 — so it climbs by the same absolute amount each time. Whatever the starting gap between mouths and food, a multiplying series must eventually overtake an adding series, and from that purely mathematical asymmetry Malthus drew his conclusion: population is necessarily held down to the level of the means of subsistence by checks. He divided those checks into preventive checks, which lower the birth rate — moral restraint, late marriage, celibacy — and positive checks, which raise the death rate, namely famine, epidemic disease and war. Note the honest point about option (b), because it is the reason this item feels unfair: 'exponential' and 'linear' describe the same two curves in modern language, and a candidate who chose (b) understood Malthus perfectly well. The blanks, however, ask for a named progression, and in mathematics the named progressions are geometric and arithmetic — 'exponential progression' and 'linear progression' are not standard terms for a sequence. The key marks (d), and (d) is also the phrasing Malthus actually used.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Reverses the whole thesis. If food supply grew exponentially and population only linearly there would be no Malthusian problem at all — subsistence would outrun population indefinitely and the checks Malthus described would be unnecessary. This option describes the optimistic case that his critics, from Ester Boserup to the Green Revolution agronomists, later argued was closer to the truth; it is not what Malthus said.  (b) Not marked, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a bluff. Mathematically this option puts the two variables on the same growth paths as the correct option: an exponential curve is the continuous analogue of a geometric progression, and a linear one of an arithmetic progression. What it does not do is fill the blanks with the names of progressions, which is what the sentence asks for, and it does not reproduce Malthus's own words. When a fill-in-the-blank question is quoting a classical author, answer in that author's vocabulary — here 'geometrical ratio' and 'arithmetical ratio' from the 1798 Essay.  (c) The exact inversion of the correct pair, and the single most common error on this question. It has population creeping up by equal additions while food multiplies — again the reverse of the Essay. The way to keep the order straight is to remember what Malthus was arguing for: he needed the faster-growing series to be population, because his whole case was that human numbers press permanently on the means of subsistence.

Concept: Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) was an English cleric and one of the first professional political economists. His Essay on the Principle of Population, published anonymously in 1798 and expanded through further editions up to 1826, was written against the optimism of Condorcet and William Godwin, who believed human society was perfectible. Malthus's counter-argument was arithmetical rather than moral: two unequal rates of growth, one multiplicative and one additive, guarantee that population presses on subsistence, so that misery and vice are permanent features of human society unless numbers are restrained. The gap is closed by checks — preventive checks working on the birth rate and positive checks working on the death rate.

State PCS 2024 Q94 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q94 — Economy PYQ with Answer