Introduction

Reflections on population in economic analysis are rarely separated from comments on poverty, the prospects for economic development and, more generally, on well-being (Stangeland 1904; Overbeek 1974).

To reconstruct the general terms of economic analysis on the problem of population, two periods can be distinguished: the period up until the second half of the sixteenth century and the period thereafter. The main difference between the two is that while in the first period we encounter essentially only reflections and conjectures on the causes of demographic dynamics, from the mid-1650s onwards a coordinated body of knowledge and theoretical reflections on the topic of population gradually emerge.

It is possible to classify the different positions on population in three broad approaches. This does not mean that all the authors and economists considered can be rigidly grouped in this way. The three approaches rather serve the purpose of allowing us to distinguish between different types of theoretical and economic policy arguments. The three approaches are: (1) the populationist-macroeconomic approach; (2) the Malthusian-microeconomic approach; and (3) the “institutional” approach.

It should be added that the three main approaches overlap in the long period under consideration. This is for two main reasons. First, there is the fact that on the theme of population an extensive theoretical debate developed, concerning the conception of the causes and consequences in terms of the prospects for development and well-being of demographic change. The best known of these debates was triggered by the Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Robert Malthus (1798). It was the debate around Malthus’s famous work that generated different positions and conflicting traditions on population.

The second cause can be traced back to the great paradigm shifts that affected the development of economic theories from mercantilism onwards. We can interpret the economic analysis of population looking at the great theoretical transformations that have taken place since mercantilist thinking. Each paradigm shift is accompanied by a transformation of the vision on population but, as we shall see below, we can trace in the history of economic analysis the continuity of the above mentioned three approaches which allow us to connect even very distant historical periods and theoretical contributions.