76 Malthas' Main Thesis Still Holds 



. . . The per capita gross national product of the United States 

 in 1955 is figured at $2,343.00; that of Ceylon at $122.00; that 

 of Burma at $52.00. . . . But let us take a more developed Latin 

 American country — say Mexico. Their per capita G.N. P. is $1 87.00. 



In other words, to raise the per capita gross national product of 

 Mexico to the American level would require a thirteenfold increase 

 in output . . . relative to the same population. But . . . Mexico will 

 double its population by 1980. So, to have Mexico reach, and keep 

 the present American per capita level by 1980 will require not a 

 thirteenfold, but a twenty-sixfold increase in output (gross national 

 product) ! In absolute terms it means a rise in Mexican annual gross 

 national product from around $6 billion to $78 billion, to $156 

 biUion! ^ 



The almost insurmountable difficulties the overpopulated agrarian 

 countries face in finding the capital to achieve a modern technology 

 have recently been explored in an extensive analysis by the Interna- 

 tional Bank for Reconstruction and Development, with India as the 

 model. The outlook is somber unless population growth can be 

 checked. The United Nations' report cited above sums it up in these 

 words : 



. . . accelerating population growth can aggravate the problem of 

 capital shortage, which is one of the most important obstacles to 

 economic development of nearly all under-developed countries. . . . 

 While in a well-developed dynamic economy the demand for such 

 capital investments may serve as a stimulus to continuing economic 

 growth, the case of the under-developed countries, with their nar- 

 row margin of income over subsistence needs, is different. For most 

 of them it is difficult to save and invest enough from their meagre 

 annual income to permit economic development to proceed at a sat- 

 isfactory pace, even without rapid population growth.^ 



In discussing the Abbe Raynal's dictum that "before social laws 

 existed, man had the right to subsistence," Thomas Malthus made 

 some points on the distinction between rights and powers which the 

 above considerations make very relevant today: 



3 David McCord Wright, "Economic Needs and the Population Explosion," 

 speech at the International Industrial Development Conference, San Francisco, 

 October 14, 1957, pp. 1-2. 



^ United Nations, Bureau of Social Affairs, Report on the World Social Situa- 

 tion, New York, 1957, pp. 5, 49. 



