Mr. Keynes' Evidence for Over-Population

IN an address on Population and Unemployment delivered to the Economic Section of the British Association last September, I criticized certain statements made by Mr. J. M. Keynes. My address has been reprinted, according to custom, in the Economic Journal, for December, 1923, and is there followed by a Reply from Mr. Keynes, giving his evidence for the statements which I challenged. Before examining this evidence, let me try to clear the issue, by indicating what is and what is not in dispute. The one point of direct disagreement is as to whether Europe was already before the war reaching the limits of the population that it could hope to support without lowering its standards of living. This, in relation to the main problem of population, is a point of historical detail, and it is much more important to me than to Mr. Keynes. If his view be correct-that in Europe the economic tendencies were already adverse and the population excessive before the war-there can be little hesitation in regarding the population as still more in excess after war's destruction of our resources ; the burden of proof certainly lies on anyone who maintains the contrary. If my view be correct, that Mr. Keynes' reading of pre-war conditions was wrong and that there was then no sign of over-population in Europe, it is still open to him to argue that in the changed conditions the population is excessive and that a check to further increase is urgently required; the burden of proof, however, lies on him. There are other points which are points of disagreement only in so far as Mr. Keynes has come to definite conclusions upon them, while I plead for inquiry and suspended judgment. The most important of these is the definite and immediate advocacy of birth control as a means of limiting population. It is not my view that mankind can wisely continue to propagate indefinitely without considering the consequences; I expressed the contrary view as emphatically as I could at Liverpool. But the consequences and re-actions of birth control also require consideration. There are other points on which I am glad to think that we are in complete agreement. Among them are the interpretation of our present troubles as mainly due on the one hand to the break-down

Economics · Keynesian economics · Income, Poverty, and Inequality

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