Both Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo, who described the “iron law of wages,” linked poverty to:
capitalist greed.
lack of government oversight.
population growth.
educational opportunity.
The Correct Answer and Explanation is :
The correct answer is population growth.
Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo were influential economists in the 18th and 19th centuries who both developed theories linking poverty to population growth.
Thomas Malthus
Malthus is most famous for his theory on population growth, presented in his work An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). Malthus argued that while population grows geometrically (exponentially), the resources needed to support that population (such as food production) grow at an arithmetic (linear) rate. As the population grows, it inevitably outstrips the available resources, leading to scarcity, poverty, and famine. He believed that this imbalance would naturally lead to checks on population growth, such as disease, famine, and war, which would reduce the population to more manageable levels. Malthus saw population growth as a central driver of poverty, as resources were always insufficient to keep up with the rising number of people.
David Ricardo and the Iron Law of Wages
David Ricardo, another classical economist, is associated with the “iron law of wages,” which holds that real wages (the income workers receive) tend to gravitate towards a subsistence level, just enough for workers to survive and reproduce. According to Ricardo, if wages were to rise above this subsistence level, the population would increase, which would lead to an increase in labor supply. As more workers entered the labor market, competition would drive wages back down to the subsistence level. This cycle perpetuated poverty among the working class because, despite changes in wages, the fundamental issue of overpopulation kept wages low and poverty high.
Thus, both Malthus and Ricardo believed that the issue of population growth was intrinsically tied to the persistence of poverty. They argued that as the population grew, it put pressure on resources, leading to economic hardship for many.