By the 1960s, though, Malthus returned to fashion among scholars known as the neo-Malthusian school. The neo-Malthusians noted that the population of the world in the times of Malthus was less than 1 billion people; today it is over 4 billion.
Further, the population growth of about 0.5 per cent a year, which alarmed Malthus, has risen more than three times to a rate of around 1.6 per cent a year. Similarly, North and South America were sparsely populated at the time of Malthus, but practically all of their productive land is now in full use.
In other words, the “slack” has now been taken up what, while the alarms of Malthus may have been premature in his day, it is quite justifiable in the current situation. Even the North American continent faces severe problems,’ although it is lightly populated compare with Europe or Asia.
Many areas in the United States are already short of water, and this condition is bound to worsen as population soars. Further, Americans now pay high prices for oil and other minerals, which, until recently, were abundant and cheap. In spite of these problems; the United States may maintain its present population at a high level. But can it do so for a population half again as large, or twice as large, or four times as large?
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Some other parts of the world are in a better position than the United States in terms of population density, but most are worse off. In the view of the appearance of crisis is only a matter of time. Many countries face a real challenge now. China, for example, has more than 1 billion people, as the whole world had in the 1840s.