Population growth, farmland, and the long-run standard of living

"This paper studies the natural-resources element in the theory of population growth over the very long run. In the context of the stock of land and Malthusian crises in earlier times, the model shows how resources have become more available rather than more scarce, even as population and income have increased. The paper sketches a mechanism which added to the Malthusian system, leads to entirely different conclusions than does the Malthusian system.... That is, population growth creates new problems which in the short run constitute additional burdens which, in the longer run, lead to new developments that leave people better off than if the problems had never arisen." This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the 1989 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (see Population Index, Vol. 55, No. 3, Fall 1989, p. 382).