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Malthus believed that population growth always outstrips growth in production of subsistence resources and the only way to increase prosperity is by controlling the growth of population.
However, humanity has only a limited ability to voluntarily reduce the growth of its population (through ‘preventive checks’ such as postponing marriage or practising sexual abstinence or celibacy).
Therefore, Malthus believed that ‘positive checks’ to population growth – in the form of famines and diseases – were inevitable because they were nature’s way of dealing with the imbalance between food supply and increasing population.