II. THEORIES OF POPULATION: MOVING ON FROM MALTHUS

Comparing historical trends in population growth with those in agricultural output, Malthus concluded that the capacity for increases in agricultural productive output was insufficient when set against the natural reproductive capabilities of humans. The contest was the result of two “laws of nature,” namely, that food was necessary to human existence, and that the passion between the sexes was necessary and would remain in its present state (Malthus Reference Malthus1798, p. 11; Waterman Reference Waterman1991, p. 37). For the lower classes, family size was constrained by the “positive checks” of malnutrition, starvation, and disease, which waxed and waned in response to exogenous shocks (Malthus Reference Malthus1798, pp. 14, 19). Those of the middle and upper classes were expected to employ more agency, adopting “preventative checks” via “foresight” and “moral restraint” to have smaller families, resulting in slower population growth. Although it is now recognized that Malthus’s mature work included an account of how to manage recurrent bouts of distress (Winch Reference Winch2013, p. 47; see also Emmett Reference Emmett2025),Footnote ⁶ his earlier theory of the relation between population growth and poverty risked the interpretation that people must be left to suffer the effects of their reproductive decisions, and, conversely, that people would be rewarded for virtuous and prudential reproductive behavior. His early theory of population and poverty thus refused a role for any form of birth control beyond restraint, and this set the terms for classical economic thought on labor supply, wages, and productivity for much of the next half-century. His work also served as a key reference point for the neoclassical economists whose work we analyze.Footnote ⁷

Gilbert Faccarello, Masashi Izumo, and Hiromi Morishita (Reference Faccarello, Izumo, Morishita, Faccarello, Izumo and Morishita2020) document how Malthus’s Essay (Reference Malthus1798) retained a privileged position regarding reprints and translations compared to his Principles (Reference Malthus1820), despite the latter’s more nuanced treatment of population. His tracts and pamphlets on population fared even worse with the next generation of economists (Faccarello et al. Reference Faccarello, Izumo, Morishita, Faccarello, Izumo and Morishita2020). Practically, this meant that most later interpreters worked from a relatively simple presentation of Malthusian theory. Indeed, by the time of Marshall, Pareto, and Wicksell, “the infrastructure of the argument had changed so drastically that Malthus’s Essay could only function as a venerable grandfather-text to respectfully reference” (Walter Reference Walter, Faccarello, Izumo and Morishita2020, p. 19).Footnote ⁸

Although adopting his broad outlines, Marshall, Pareto, and Wicksell nonetheless diverged in significant ways from Malthus. The specificity of Malthusian logic to an agricultural economy was an obvious limitation in an industrialized world characterized by “steam, electricity, and education of the masses” (Marshall in Whitaker Reference Whitaker1996, vol. 3, p. 270; see also Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 303; Wicksell [1880] Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1999, pp. 96–97; Bankovsky Reference Bankovsky2025, pp. 44–58). Already, evolution in theories of the labor market by late classical economists such as John Stuart Mill and Jean-Baptiste Say had led to changing perspectives on the population question (Faccarello et al. Reference Faccarello, Izumo, Morishita, Faccarello, Izumo and Morishita2020).Footnote ⁹ So, too, did the socialist, feminist, and other late nineteenth-century reformist movements that pushed neo-Malthusianism to the front of social discourse, insisting that the solution to unsustainable population growth was “conscious reproduction,” or active intervention to limit family size via the use of contraceptives (Peart and Levy Reference Peart and Levy2008; Macciò and Romani Reference Macciò, Romani, Faccarello, Izumo and Morishita2020; Montaigne Reference Montaigne2017; Bankovsky Reference Bankovsky2025, pp. 39–69). We return to the positions of Mill and the socialists in section IV of this paper.

Seeking to present a “modern version of old doctrines with the aid of new work, and with reference to the new problems of our own age,” Marshall devoted two chapters in Principles to a re-examination of Malthusian theory ([1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, p. 37; see chs. 4 and 5 of Book 4). Substituting scientific reasoning for Malthus’s theodicy, Marshall divided Malthus’s analysis of population into three parts: the supply of labor, the demand for labor, and the conclusion that “the growth of population would be checked by poverty or some other cause of suffering unless it were checked by voluntary restraint” (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, p. 148; see also Marshall and Marshall Reference Marshall and Marshall1879, p. 30). While the Malthusian position on the supply of labor “remain[ed] substantially valid” (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, p. 149), Marshall was skeptical about the second and third pieces of logic. Because he had not witnessed the technological changes associated with the Industrial Revolution, Marshall argued that Malthus had vastly underestimated the capacity for productive expansion ([1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, p. 149). Further, instead of higher labor productivity being automatically translated into population growth as Malthus assumed, Marshall argued that economic gains would increasingly be absorbed as improved standards of living for the working classes (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013; see also Bankovsky Reference Bankovsky2025, pp. 48–51; Bowman Reference Bowman2006; Walter Reference Walter, Faccarello, Izumo and Morishita2020, Reference Walter2021). Hewing closer to Malthus than contemporary neo-Malthusians such as Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, Marshall refused to sanction the use of contraceptives, stating the importance of “sufficient self-control to keep the family within the requisite bounds without transgressing moral laws” ([1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, p. 168; implied also by pp. 148–149). Marshall argued that changing social norms combined with the desire of the working classes to emulate their betters would lead them to practice greater restraint. Indeed, for Marshall, what Malthus had discovered was not a natural or mechanical law but rather the conditionality of population growth on social and historical forces (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, p. 148; see also Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, pp. 292, 304).

Pareto’s exposure to Malthus came through the continental literature: the French with their decided bias in favor of Say’s presentation of the population question and the Italians who disclaimed Malthusianism because of its neglect of geographical and social forces (Macciò and Romani Reference Macciò, Romani, Faccarello, Izumo and Morishita2020). Much like Marshall, Pareto saw Malthus’s population principle as lying outside of science, its presentation both “unclear” and “polemical” (Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 310).Footnote ¹⁰ By focusing on how the means of subsistence limited population, Malthusians had “got off track,” too narrowly concentrated on how to increase means by either decreased waste or increased productivity (Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 303). Dividing Malthusian theory into four parts, Pareto distinguished the (a) “scientific part” devoted to the study of “uniformities of phenomena,” (b) the descriptive and historical part, (c) the polemical part that pushed back against optimistic social philosophies, and (d) “the part whose purpose is to preach certain rules of conduct” ([Reference Pareto1906] 1971, pp. 310–311).Footnote ¹¹ What Malthus had failed to appreciate was the social transformation of attitudes that served as a check on reproduction. Following the Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari, Pareto rationalized that couples would have children if they were perceived to increase the family’s utility (Pareto Reference Pareto1896, p. 153; see also Mosca Reference Mosca2025). Correspondingly, they would forbear having children who would diminish the family’s standard of living. This could be better understood by situating population growth in the context of a general equilibrium model of costs and returns to investments in “personal capital,” where population size was a function of the “cost of production (economic and moral) of man” relative to the expected return on investment (1896, p. 154; Macciò and Romani Reference Macciò, Romani, Faccarello, Izumo and Morishita2020, pp. 257–259). The question remained, however, whether the poorer and less educated classes would make sensible decisions or if some sort of intervention would be necessary to encourage them to limit birth rates.

What set Wicksell apart from Marshall and Pareto was his conception of a population optimum and his endorsement of population stationarity (Wicksell [1880] Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1999).Footnote ¹² Wicksell explained, “[T]here were at least two such [population] questions which should be carefully separated” (Wicksell [1910] Reference Wicksell1973, p. 207). The first “is nothing more than the well-known Malthusian Dilemma” that the human capacity and inclination to procreate will inevitably outstrip what society can reasonably support (Wicksell [1910] Reference Wicksell1973, p. 207). The second question was economic. Rather than seeking the maximum population that could be supported at minimum subsistence, Wicksell argued, we should instead consider “what population size and density would then guarantee everyone the maximum share of well-being and would thus, economically speaking, be the best” (Wicksell [1910] Reference Wicksell1973, p. 208). He defined this optimum as the point at which any further increase in population would be met with a decline in average individual welfare.Footnote ¹³ This would occur when the diminishing marginal productivity of labor—the result of dividing fixed capital and land resources across more people—was equal to the gains accruing from the division of labor. This meant increases in the population could be sustainable only when aggregate output experienced “constant growth, fully matching the increase in population” (Wicksell [1922] Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1997, p. 221). Unlike Marshall, Wicksell was pessimistic on the scope for technological improvements to achieve such growth, believing productivity gains would inevitably be wiped out by population increases ([1880] Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1999, pp. 96–97; [1901] Reference Wicksell1934, p. 121). Instead, the solution lay in a stationary population; to accomplish this, Wicksell argued, the only rational option was the use of voluntary measures of population control: “There is no other choice besides the neomalthusian programme: early marriage but few children—on average 2–3 per family—and for the rest, voluntary sterility” (Wicksell [1910] Reference Wicksell, Strøm and Thalberg1979, p. 150).

III. MEASURING POPULATION AND FERTILITY

The population trends identified by Malthus accelerated over the intervening half-century. During the Victorian Era, England witnessed unprecedented growth, as the population more than doubled, aided by improvements in health and sanitation. Simultaneously, within population subgroups, fertility patterns changed, evinced particularly in the declining child-bearing by the middle and upper classes (Foreman-Peck and Zhao Reference Foreman-Peck and Zhou2018). In Italy, standards of living were among the lowest in Europe (Saraceno, Benassi, and Morlicchio Reference Saraceno, Benassi and Morlicchio2020). In 1861, fewer than 60% of the predominantly rural population earned disposable income sufficient to satisfy basic needs (Amendola et al. Reference Amendola, Brandolini, Vecchi and Vecchi2011). While over the next half-century, huge improvements occurred, they reached the population unevenly, contributing to the emigration of more than thirteen million Italians between 1880 and 1914 (Sunna and Ricciardo Reference Sunna and Ricciardo2023). Over the same period in Sweden, declining domestic fertility rates and mass emigration led nationalists to stoke fears over the continued existence of the Swedish state; conservatives used the population question as a reason to deny expanded rights to women (Carlson Reference Carlson1990).

These striking changes in the growth of population and the distribution of people across countries and between urban and rural areas in the late nineteenth century were not only observable—increasingly, they were measurable. The development of state administrative capacity allowed for the first time the construction of reliable measures of fertility, child survival, family health, and immigration. These metrics were studied in relation to other indicators of improved living standards, including investment in education, the distribution of family income, and the age at marriage. Many people, including Marshall, suggested that metrics such as deficits in nutrition and health, in addition to mortality rates, could be used to assess progress combating poverty (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013]; Bowman Reference Bowman2006). Although rejecting Malthus’s pessimism and religious pedanticism, Wicksell nonetheless credited his “numerous and profound statistical studies” that provided “a firm foundation for the theory to build on, whereas it had previous been based more on guesswork and probability” (Wicksell [1880] Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1999, p. 95). Marshall acknowledged that the construction of ratios and the use of early estimates of national population lent scientific credibility to Malthus’s Essay. As Marshall put it, Malthus’s argument was “still in great measure valid in substance” ([1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, p. 149). And while Pareto complained of Malthus’s data sources and calculations, he acknowledged that Malthus had “the great merit” of trying to empirically demonstrate his claims (Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 310).

Malthusian theory had predicted that those people with higher incomes would marry earlier and have more offspring since they could afford to do so. Subsequent economists observed that marriage and reproductive choices were a function not only of income but also of culture and class (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, pp. 150–160; Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 304). The lower fertility rates of the upper, professional, and educated classes “had by that time solicited the attention of a vast array of authors” (Prévost Reference Prévost2009, p. 46). Marshall attributed this to the higher average age of women at marriage among these groups (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, pp. 150–151, 168). Citing medical studies, he estimated that delaying marriage by five years would decrease family size by an average of one child per couple (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, p. 150). Nonetheless, Marshall did not criticize the poorer classes for marrying earlier, believing that it was easier for working-class families to attain the standard of living of their own class even if they had children earlier. And although Pareto derided Malthus’s reliance on “the custom of marrying late,” he nonetheless paid close attention to the relation between nuptiality and fertility (Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 305). Wicksell identified reduced and delayed nuptiality as the most important contributors to falling fertility rates in Sweden; his conclusions were based on census data (Wicksell [1910] Reference Wicksell, Strøm and Thalberg1979, p. 126). Studying data pulled from censuses and the registrations of births, deaths, and marriages for various countries (Pareto Reference Pareto1896, p. 162), Pareto observed that birth rates for married and unmarried women varied both within and across countries in ways that could not be explained solely by the age at marriage, which suggested the use of preventative checks. Wicksell reached the same conclusion—that the French employed contraceptive practices at higher rates than people in other countries, something both Wicksell and Pareto ascribed to the incentives of the French inheritance system (Wicksell [Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1914] 1999; Pareto Reference Pareto1896, [Reference Pareto1906] 1971).Footnote ¹⁴

The co-construction of statistical fact and poverty policy was particularly evident in Marshall’s methodology, which melded the descriptive and the evaluative (Bankovsky Reference Bankovsky2019). The descriptive aspect involved the empirical study of family behavior across classes, analyzing the relation between family income, family formation or marriage age, birth rates, infant mortality rates (a proxy for standard of living), and the education rates of children. Marshall’s evaluative dimension involved assessing whether these class-based regularities were desirable and whether or how they might be improved. (We take this up in detail in the next section of this paper.) Drawing on census and taxation data as well as registries of births, deaths, and marriages, Marshall identified three regularities or stylized facts. The first was that working-class families commenced having children earlier than their artisanal and aristocratic counterparts. This resulted in working-class families having more children than artisanal families, who in turn had more children than middle- and upper-class families, a pattern Marshall largely considered socially and economically acceptable ([1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, pp. 150–151). A second regularity observed by Marshall—the chronic underinvestment in education by working-class families caused by high future discount rates, a lack of resources, and absence of experience or knowledge as to the benefits of education—would provide the rationale for much of his poverty alleviation program (pp. 180, 467–468). The third regularity, common to the middle and upper classes, was that mothers mostly work in the home and fathers mostly in the market; Marshall also assessed this positively. Marshall claimed (albeit without supporting evidence) that the higher infant mortality rates of working mothers was attributable to physical demands of factory employment (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, pp. 165, 181). Indeed, the

Marshall thus supported Factory Acts legislation limiting the employment hours of women. He also advocated for keeping women’s wages low to disincentivize factory work (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, pp. 469, 621, 622, 630). On the same grounds, Marshall defended gender-specific minimum wages, with the wage for men established at a level deemed sufficient to support a wife and children ([1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, pp. 469, 595).

In Cours (Reference Pareto1896, Reference Pareto1897) Pareto devoted significant attention to population statistics, considering the differing use of preventative and repressive checks across civilizations. Preventative checks were those that operated before and “up to the moment of birth”; repressive checks operated postnatally and included poverty, famine, epidemics, and war (Pareto Reference Pareto1896, pp. 122–142; see also Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 305).Footnote ¹⁵ The “mutual dependence” of population and income meant that short-run and long-run population responses to changes in income might vary. Using data from England, Germany, and Norway, Pareto demonstrated that the first iterative responses to increases in economic prosperity were increased nuptiality and natality, followed by decreases in mortality and emigration. However, in subsequent iterative responses, these variables may move in either direction, depending on the relative size of shifts in income and health and migration patterns (Pareto Reference Pareto1896, pp. 154–155; Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, pp. 304–310). Pareto concluded that the simultaneous increase in population and wealth observed over the long run in both England and France as the result of industrialization meant that Malthus’s principle did not hold universally. While some of the deviations in population growth trends could be explained as temporary responses to economic, political, and environmental conditions, Pareto believed the evidence suggested that wealth was growing faster than population (Pareto Reference Pareto1896, p. 141; 1897, pp. 327–328), and that it did so because of declining rates of population growth, attributable to the rising age of marriage and the use of contraceptive practices (Pareto Reference Pareto1896, p. 328; see also Pareto in Maccabelli Reference Maccabelli2008).

Wicksell also supplemented his theoretical analysis of population with empirical studies of the distribution of income, standards of living, and population trends.Footnote ¹⁶ Using census data, Swedish mortality, fertility, marriage, and emigration rates were compared to those for other European countries and the United States. Wicksell concluded that fertility was primarily determined by the number of married women and the average age at marriage. Low infant mortality among the rich —and the high rates for illegitimate children—could be explained by the care parents could afford their children (Wicksell [1910] Reference Wicksell, Strøm and Thalberg1979, p. 132; this point was also made by Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, pp. 150–151, 156, 167, 168). Wicksell attributed the decline in mortality across all age groups to improvements in “sanitary and economic conditions” ([1910] Reference Wicksell, Strøm and Thalberg1979, p. 132; similarly, see Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 294). Like Marshall, Wicksell believed middle- and upper-class families were better incentivized to limit family size because of their “the anxiety to provide the children with careful upbringing, which will allow them to assume at least the same social station as the parents themselves” (Wicksell [Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1914] 1999, p. 127). Unlike Marshall, Wicksell thought improved knowledge of how to achieve “voluntary sterility” was the more likely explanation for the decline in family size—more so than social pressure to restraint (Wicksell [Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1914] 1999, p. 127).

For Wicksell and Marshall, empirical studies of population were meant to do more than underpin theory. Wicksell argued that advances in political economy required not only “achievements in the field of pure theory” but also achievements in “historical and statistical fields” (Wicksell [1897] Reference Wicksell and Lindhal1958, p. 141). Indeed, Pareto’s statistical analysis of the distribution of income in relation to population would prove to be one of his more enduring contributions to economic analysis (Gabutti Reference Gabutti2020; Mosca Reference Mosca2025). Yet, whereas Pareto meant his work to be descriptive, Marshall, like Wicksell, saw the study of “the growth of manking [sic] in numbers, in health and strength, in knowledge, ability and in richness of character” ([1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, p. 116) as a necessary step to devising appropriate remedies for poverty; the facts he produced were explicitly meant to be prescriptive and inform policy debates (see also Gabutti Reference Gabutti2020).

IV. CONTRIBUTIONS TO POLICY DEBATES ON STATE REMEDIES FOR POVERTY

Already by the 1830s in England, reductions in mortality had led to a rapidly growing and progressively more urban population where the traditional positive Malthusian checks no longer seemed as binding. The public reaction to the newly visible urban-industrial poverty manifested in demands to reform the Poor Laws, which were seen to enable family poverty by providing indiscriminate and non-deterrent relief (Waterman Reference Waterman1991; Winch Reference Winch2013). Poor Law Commissioner Nassau Senior leveraged Malthus’s theory of population in support of workhouses, although Malthus himself took the position that such “indoor” relief would be no more effective than the system of “outdoor” relief provided through parishes (Senior Reference Senior1829; see also Montaigne Reference Montaigne2017; Orsi Reference Orsi2017; Waterman Reference Waterman1991; Winch Reference Winch2013). Nonetheless, the 1834 reforms introduced the “indoor” system, and the conditionality of relief on work was deepened (Cooper Reference Cooper2017).Footnote ¹⁷ This shift was motivated in part by the growing popular conviction that poverty was the result of individual moral failings. In the minds of Victorians, drunkenness, prostitution, and other “immoral” characteristics of working-class urban life became the explanations for the poverty of the poor (Bateman Reference Bateman2023, p. 49; Groenewegen Reference Groenewegen1994). In both Italy and Sweden, diminishing per capita income, declining real wages, and urbanization contributed to increasingly poor living standards for the working class. Much like in England, conservative Swedish society blamed poor moral choices for poverty. The little poor relief available was largely organized through religious institutions or social and familial networks. The inability of the church and informal social networks to meet the needs of the urban poor resulted in vast out-migration, with millions of Italians and Swedes leaving for North America (Lundahl Reference Lundahl2015; Malanima Reference Malanima2020).

Socialists such as Robert Owen and William Thompson criticized Malthus for what they judged to be an erroneous calculation that the worker’s capacity for production was much less than the worker’s capacity for reproduction (Langer Reference Langer1975, p. 682). Members of the working class ridiculed the idea that their misery derived from their choice to have children they could not afford. Instead, they blamed injustice in salaries and the unfair distribution of income and wealth (Langer Reference Langer1975, p. 682). Rejecting the Malthusian premise that poor relief was futile, John Stuart Mill advanced a raft of social reforms to counter widespread poverty; these included the establishment of labor unions and cooperatives, universal suffrage, and expanded education. Fundamentally, however, the “improvability of human affairs” for the working class was conditional on preventative checks via “a voluntary restriction of the increase of their numbers,” which, in the long run, would alter the labor-capital ratio in their favor (Mill [1873] Reference Mill1969, p. 74). Mill ushered in an era in which economists claimed prominent positions as socio-economic policy advisors, their status bolstered by the professionalization of the discipline (Bowman Reference Bowman2006).

Marshall took a keen interest in the practical problems of labor, poverty, and education, participating in public debates, writing for popular consumption, and contributing to Royal Commissions (Bankovsky Reference Bankovsky2025, ch. 2; Bowman Reference Bowman2006). Pareto was a regular contributor to the popular discourse on social legislation (Mosca Reference Mosca2025). More radical by far than Marshall and Pareto, Wicksell presented his economics as an extension of his social reformism—but one part of “a thoroughly revolutionary program” to achieve social change (Wicksell [1901] Reference Wicksell1934, p. 4). All three consider that with the expansion of the franchise, the relegation of the poor to a life of misery became both less tolerable and more politically perilous (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013; Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 308; Wicksell ([1896] Reference Wicksell, Musgrave and Peackock1967, pp. 83–84). However, whereas Pareto meant his study of population and income in Cours and Manuale to be scientific and descriptive, for Marshall and Wicksell, the study of population was requisite to the larger objectives. Marshall sought to understand the determinants of human choice in “everyday life,” the distribution of wealth, “the conditions which surround extreme poverty,” and the role of economics in support of “the higher wellbeing of man [sic]” (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, p. 3). Wicksell framed the central economic question as how to satisfy “human needs” in a way that would give rise to “the greatest possible satisfaction to society as a whole”; in the context of modern “public opinion,” this included full consideration for the conditions of the poor and working classes (Wicksell [1910] Reference Wicksell1934, pp. 3–4).

Believing that cycles of poverty were not as inevitable as Malthus had predicted, Marshall was optimistic that continued improvements in productivity and education would facilitate higher living standards, despite England’s rapidly growing population (Bankovsky Reference Bankovsky2025; Faccarello et al. Reference Faccarello, Faccarello, Izumo and Morishita2020). For Marshall, poverty was less a problem of physical than of human capital. Since labor productivity appeared central to securing the improvements on which increases in population and living standards relied, the obvious policy prescription was to improve the family’s contribution of labor to industry (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, p. 469; see also Bankovsky Reference Bankovsky2019; Gouverneur Reference Gouverneur2023). Marshall observed that families with higher standards of living—frequently corresponding with having fewer children—had more resources to invest in their children whether it be via technical, scientific, or professional training (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, p. 180). However, this required “a habit of distinctly realizing the future” and discounting current consumption (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, p. 180). That the poorer classes did not pursue such a course meant there was a role for state-mandated and state-provided public education (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, pp. 134, 178–181). Moreover, policies such as the Factory Acts and minimum breadwinning wages for men would, at least in Marshall’s view, facilitate better family living standards and improve care and general education of children. Replacing Malthus’s moral and religious self-development with social and intellectual personal growth as the desired outcome of social progress, Marshall argued that higher wages would make it possible for the working class to exchange hours devoted to labor for hours pursuing educational and cultural opportunities (Marshall and Marshall Reference Marshall and Marshall1879; Walter Reference Walter, Faccarello, Izumo and Morishita2020, p. 45).

For Wicksell, the mechanisms by which overpopulation engendered poverty were both individual and structural.Footnote ¹⁸ While imprudent individual choices could compound misery, poverty was primarily due to a misallocation of capital that constrained the productivity of labor, particularly for the poor and working classes (Wicksell [1910] Reference Wicksell, Strøm and Thalberg1979; see also Wicksell [1880] Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1999, p. 107). Like Marshall, Wicksell placed much of his faith for the improvability of human affairs in public education. To rely solely on individual choices reflected “a continued inadequacy in the measures undertaken by society itself for the education and upbringing of the young” (Wicksell [Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1914] 1999, p. 127). However, Wicksell went considerably further than Marshall in his demands for socio-economic reform. Poverty had to be seen as just one aspect of the larger problem of social inequality: “I do not only mean living in rags (that would be to restrict the concept too much); but poor, as I see it, is each and everyone who does not own what he necessarily needs to and also lacks a reasonable chance of getting it” (Wicksell [1880] Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1999, p. 86). Because social and economic inequality were mutually constitutive with political inequality, Wicksell insisted on universal suffrage and reform of the political system (Wicksell [1896] Reference Wicksell, Musgrave and Peackock1967). His raft of reform proposals reads like an early outline of the welfare state: redistribution of “social real income to all citizens” combined with expanded public provision of education, communication, health care, electricity, sanitation, and transportation (Wicksell in Uhr Reference Uhr1953, p. 367; see also Gardlund Reference Gardlund1996; Lundahl Reference Lundahl2005, Reference Lundahl2015). Compared to Marshall, Wicksell was more realistic about the need for employment among working-class women. In addition to policies aimed at improving labor conditions, Wicksell suggested confiscation and redistribution of inheritances, targeted price regulations, protective tariffs, and identification of industries where prices could advantageously be set below cost and subsidized by the government (Gardlund Reference Gardlund1996; Lundahl Reference Lundahl2005).

Pareto ([Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 300) dismissed both “humanitarian sentiments” and governmental interventions as ineffective actors on the distribution of income and wealth.Footnote ¹⁹ The optimality of free competition meant that there was little scope for the working classes to increase the welfare of their members except by reducing economic frictions or by reducing labor supply via emigration or lower birth rates (Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971; on Pareto, see also Wicksell [1897] 1958.) On similar grounds, Pareto opposed legislated Factory Acts that limited women’s ability to work (Pareto Reference Pareto1893, p. 277). Poverty among some fraction of the population was an inevitable outcome of heterogeneity in the quality of humans (Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 281). Variation in incomes reflected differences in human quality, which Pareto presumed followed a normal probability distribution. Any attempt to improve equality across the population was problematic because in such systems, parents would cease to be responsible for their children and hence would fail to keep their reproduction within the bounds of their contributions to production (Pareto Reference Pareto1896, p. 162). At the lowest end of the distribution, population was constrained by the minimum income below which people could not survive. In this region, repressive checks operated because “incomes are not large enough to preserve everyone … child mortality is considerable” (Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, pp. 287–288). Echoing Mill and Marshall, but without adopting their remedy of education, Pareto argued that families were largely responsible for their poverty because of their individual limitations and failings, which included poor family planning. Nonetheless, he saw the recent “rapid increases in wealth” and population as beneficial because they created “good opportunities” for social mobility (Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 296). As a stylized fact, the long-run negative association between fertility and wealth led Pareto to develop a social theory of natural selection. One facet was “the circulation of the aristocracy.” Pareto speculated that there would be constant churn between social classes from generation to generation, a function of the distribution of individual human qualities and capabilities (Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, pp. 313–316; see also Gabutti Reference Gabutti2020; Samuels Reference Samuels2017). Improvements in education and productivity could only go so far to reduce social inequality. Working-class households must be made to realize the need to reduce their family sizes to escape poverty and be provided with the appropriate methods and information to achieve family limitation.

V. FAMILY LIMITATION AS THE FUNDAMENTAL REMEDY TO POVERTY

While social reforms may mitigate some of the worst harms of poverty, to fundamentally improve the situation of the poor and working classes required decreasing their family sizes. “We are poor because there are too many of us” simplified Wicksell ([1880] Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1999, p. 95). Marshall explained that “parents can often do better in many ways for a small family than a large one” ([1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, p. 168). Like Mill, Pareto thought that it was “the egoism of parents, bringing into the world more children than they can possibly nourish, that causes a large part of humanity’s miseries” (Pareto Reference Pareto1896, p. 162). Responsible individuals were even expected to anticipate cycles of economic boom and bust, and to forbear having too many children in times of plenty. “It is completely absurd to pretend that people should be far-sighted in every act of their lives, except when it comes to one of the most important of acts: giving life to another human being” (Pareto Reference Pareto1896, p. 162).

The changing social acceptability of family planning education, contraceptive use, and abortion has often been historicized as a function of larger societal shifts—for example, outbreaks of the plague or the rise of a hegemonic Catholic church (Heinsohn and Steiger Reference Heinsohn and Steiger1999). For much of human history, knowledge of contraceptives, pregnancy prevention, and early abortion was transmitted as part of collective folk culture; this knowledge increased or decreased as a function of permissive or restrictive social attitudes (Bankovsky Reference Bankovsky2025; Griffin Reference Griffin2020). By the mid-nineteenth century, developments in medical knowledge and the professionalization of medical practice combined with expanded literacy and the proliferation of the popular press worked to shift the discussion into the public sphere. While pragmatic reformers such as William Thompson and Francis Place explicitly defended contraception, the positions of classical economists such as Jeremy Bentham and J. S. Mill were more ambiguous. Some interpreters suggest that their use of terms like “voluntary restriction” and “prudential restraint” imply more than late marriage or abstinence.Footnote ²⁰ While this is perhaps the case, Mill nonetheless opposed contraceptive knowledge for the poorer classes, arguing they lacked the nature and the capacity to effectively deploy such measures. Of limited intelligence and moral culture, the poorest were driven by instincts to activities that compounded their problems; indeed, they had failed to grasp that large families were the mechanism by which wages were kept at near subsistence (Mill Reference Mill1848, pp. 198, 439, 446).Footnote ²¹ The remedy was to push workers to become more rational from access to better education through workers’ associations and trade unions combined with the emancipation of women.

The reluctance by some economists to take a clear position on contraceptives and abortion reflected the degree to which public arguments for birth control as a preventative check remained fraught and professionally risky; the public furor surrounding the pamphlets produced by Richard Carlile and Robert Dale Owen Jr. may have been dissuasive for many (Carlile Reference Carlile1825; Owen [1830] Reference Owen1875; Skidmore Reference Skidmore1830; Himes Reference Himes1930, Reference Himes1937; see also Moore Reference Moore2010). The subsequent emergence of organized neo-Malthusianism proved an important spur to social and economic thinking on family size. Aligned with some labor, feminist, and socialist movements, neo-Malthusians argued that reduced natality would lead to the emancipation of labor through increased wages and employment for the working classes.Footnote ²² In England, Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh’s Malthusian League published and disseminated contraceptive information directed at the working classes.Footnote ²³ Although seen to contravene public decency laws, their efforts contributed to a gradual wearing down of Victorian inhibitions, which in turn allowed more scope for family planning (Montaigne Reference Montaigne2017; Peart and Levy Reference Peart and Levy2008). Paul Robin and Nelly Roussel introduced neo-Malthusianism to France as a means of emancipating women in the poorest classes (Faccarello Reference Faccarello, Faccarello, Izumo and Morishita2020). In Sweden and Norway, social radicals such as Henrik Ibsen, Ann-Margret Holmgren, August Strindberg, and Ellen Key launched the “morality debates,” challenging the double standard that accepted premarital sex for men but not for women. Intertwined with discussions on the rights, health, and sexual satisfaction of women, birth control access and education were advanced as necessary precedents to equality (Carlson Reference Carlson1990). Across Europe, social conservatives pushed back, claiming the immorality of contraception, and that legal contraception would induce premarital and extramarital sex and interfere with the rights of the unborn.Footnote ²⁴

Having identified excess child-bearing as a key contributor to poverty, particularly for the working class, Marshall, Pareto, and Wicksell were left to wrestle with the various means of limiting the size of families. Here, there was little agreement. Marshall took the most conservative position, arguing that family limitation did not require immoral contraception; instead, delayed marriage and voluntary restraint would be sufficient (Bankovsky Reference Bankovsky2019; Montaigne Reference Montaigne2017). Drawing on the stylized facts he derived from empirical studies of population, Marshall hypothesized that the upper and more educated classes married later and produced fewer children out of a desire to improve living standards ([1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, pp. 150–151, 156); in doing so, the upper classes sought to conform to social expectations that demanded children receive at least as good a standard of living as the parents themselves had enjoyed (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, pp. 150–151. This meant that families had a social obligation to refrain from child-bearing if they could not afford to do so; families that could afford children were encouraged to have them. Early and imprudent marriages contributed to poverty because they frequently resulted in insupportably large families. However, by “strengthening of the family tie” through education, greater leisure, and the quasi-permanent presence of women in the home, poverty and poor child outcomes could be largely avoided.

Marshall hoped to encourage individuals to both greater parental responsibility to existing offspring and the limiting of potential future offspring. The economic motivations for higher standards of living and to preserve family wealth—as Wicksell ([1914] Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1999, p. 127) explained, “to keep the children’s inheritance intact”—were seen as sufficient to overcome human passions and encourage family limitation. Indeed, this was one point on which Marshall, Pareto, and Wicksell agreed (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, pp. 20, 191, 501, 515, 518; Wicksell [Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1914] 1999, p. 127; Pareto Reference Pareto1896, pp. 94–95; Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 304).

Marshall’s cautionary and conservative treatment of family planning in Principles and other social writings reflected the hold that Victorian morality arguments had over social policy discussions in England (Bankovsky Reference Bankovsky2025, ch. 2). Following Malthus’s refusal to countenance the dissemination and use of contraceptive knowledge and techniques, Marshall argued that families should reduce the number of children by employing “voluntary restraint,” “sufficient self-control,” and “moral prudence” both before and within marriage (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, p. 168, and implied, pp. 148–149). Marshall’s opposition to feminism and suffrage was well known, and was a logical extension of his vision of women as angels of the hearth. His idealization of traditional roles for women centered on the home, and family comfort did not allow scope for women as sexual or independent beings (Bankovsky Reference Bankovsky2019; Groenewegen Reference Groenewegen1994; Groenewegen Reference Groenewegen1995, pp. 499–500, 507, 512–513; Pujol Reference Pujol1984; Gouverneur Reference Gouverneur2023; McWilliams-Tullberg Reference McWilliams-Tullberg, Raffaelli, Becattini and Dardi2006). Neither did Marshall acknowledge how women’s economic dependence on unreliable breadwinners made them vulnerable to sexual and physical violence (Rathbone Reference Rathbone1924; Griffin Reference Griffin2020; Bankovsky Reference Bankovsky2025, ch. 2). Marshall’s insistence that married men and women commit to voluntary restraint and employ self-control, eschewing birth control, fits within this narrative.

Pareto countered that views such as Marshall’s were neither scientific nor realistic (Reference Pareto1896, p. 162); laws designed to delay or prevent marriage had never proved effective (Pareto Reference Pareto1896, pp. 156–157). Distilling the differences in birth rates that were obvious across countries and classes, Pareto reasoned these reflected the use of preventative checks that worked either by limiting sexual union or by the conscious reduction of births in each union, this practice including “direct means” such as the use of contraceptives and abortion (Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 305). As Manuela Mosca has shown in private correspondence with Maffeo Pantaleoni, Pareto endorsed family limitation as the necessary and responsible choice (Pareto in De Rosa Reference De Rosa1960, vol. 1, p. 449; Mosca Reference Mosca2025).Footnote ²⁵ As policy, Pareto thought it was hypocritical to treat contraceptives as immoral or to subject neo-Malthusians to prosecution (Pareto Reference Pareto and Busino1913).Footnote ²⁶ Rather, family limitation via the use of birth control was a social question that required balancing of the interests of the species with those of the individual. Mosca (Reference Mosca2025) shows that Pareto’s views “on the woman question” were complex and changeable—both across time and between economics and sociology. His antipathy to state interference and nihilistic view of social movements—including feminism, which he once supported—can be seen in his professional indifference to the use of birth control as a preventative check. Statistical evidence suggested people consciously employed birth control techniques and Pareto thought that the state should accept this and avoid legislating morality.

Wicksell took an even more radical position, publicly advocating for legal contraceptives and sex education for everyone, regardless of class or marital status. He argued that contraceptives not only provided a means by which to reduce poverty, but their use enabled intimacy as a human right independent of procreation (Wicksell [1880] Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1999, pp. 107–109). “Modern workers (like modern women) have wearied of being more or less mere animals—both beasts of burden and breeding stock—and want to feel that they are fully and completely human beings” (Wicksell [Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1914] 1999, p. 134). Although feminists would later push to expand self-interest from the economic to the sexual sphere (Folbre Reference Folbre2009), neo-Malthusians were among the first to advance sexual satisfaction as an independent end. In Sweden, this was prosecuted as an extension of the morality debates to which Wicksell contributed (Carlson Reference Carlson1990). His adoption of the neo-Malthusian approach to sexuality differentiated him from those such as Marshall who centered the reason for sexual relations on reproduction. This distinction explains their opposing positions on early marriage.Footnote ²⁷

Since those of the upper and middle classes had long limited family size through both social and physiological means, it was apparent to Wicksell that the poor and working classes would reap the most benefits from access to reliable birth control and family planning information. Smaller family sizes would increase standards of living for the poor, raise wages, and shift the balance of economic power from landowners and capitalists to laborers (Wicksell [Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1914] 1999, p. 128; see also Pareto [Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 304 on direct versus indirect effects). In response to conservative arguments of the immorality of birth control, Wicksell maintained that voluntary family limitation was the only humane choice to the Malthusian dilemma that demanded society choose between reducing births or increasing deaths (Wicksell [1910] Reference Wicksell, Strøm and Thalberg1979, p. 145). Direct efforts at family limitation were more effective than calls for moral restraint, whether operationalized as fewer marriages, later marriages, or celibacy. Such admonitions went against natural human instinct (Wicksell [1910] Reference Wicksell, Strøm and Thalberg1979, p. 150). Wicksell’s lectures and writings on neo-Malthusianism sparked a public furor and cost him employment (Gardlund Reference Gardlund1996).Footnote ²⁸

Wicksell was the rare economist from this period to explicitly condone legal access to abortion. Society had an obligation, he explained, either to support women economically whilst they raised their children or to give them the means by which to avoid unwanted pregnancies (Wicksell Reference Wicksell, Jonung, Hedlund-Nyström and Jonung1916, in Lundahl Reference Lundahl2005, p. 67). Wicksell had long argued that access and knowledge to contraceptives should be facilitated by the medical profession and that education regarding the methods and benefits of family limitation should be made available to all people (Wicksell [1880] Reference Wicksell and Sandelin1999, p. 108). In 1916, he drafted an essay on abortion in historical context in response to a legal case that year. Although never published, its contents are summarized by Mats Lundahl (Reference Lundahl2005, pp. 67–68). Wicksell’s recommendation was the formulation of explicit criteria when abortion should be allowed—in his view, freely and unrestricted before the third month. Better and regular contraception was preferred to using abortion as a means of controlling fertility; nonetheless, abortion should be decriminalized and exist as “an available last resort, a safe guarantee for the many that absolutely need it” (Wicksell Reference Wicksell1925, p. 24; Wicksell Reference Wicksell, Jonung, Hedlund-Nyström and Jonung1921, p. 248). Pareto had gone less far, merely observing that abortion operated as an important preventative obstacle to births in many societies, including “some large modern cities” ([Reference Pareto1906] 1971, p. 305). In contrast, Marshall’s silence reflected the ongoing social disquiet surrounding the use of contraceptives and abortion; indeed, it was difficult for a person to defend without being positioned as a political and social radical (Bankovsky Reference Bankovsky2025; Moore Reference Moore2010). The silence also emphasizes the degree to which religious, legal, and medical organizations controlled the popular narrative on contraceptive use and abortion despite the efforts by economists to shift the discussion to issues of individual choice and poverty.

Emerging in the late nineteenth century, Social Darwinism added another layer to discussions of birth control and family planning.Footnote ²⁹ Some people, such as Herbert Spencer, mobilized the language of social evolution to argue against contraception and abortion for the lower classes and working classes—because access would undermine the natural selection processes that spontaneously rewarded good judgment and punished poor decision-making (Peart and Levy Reference Peart and Levy2008).Footnote ³⁰ Academic eugenicists similarly argued for the use/restriction of birth control as a function of the superiority/inferiority of population subgroups; these views became particularly associated with the American progressive economists (Leonard Reference Leonard2015). One unfortunate outcome was that the popular discussions of contraceptive practices and abortion were pushed in racist and anti-feminist directions. Concomitantly, information was explicitly repressed by legal bans on contraceptive and abortion education and practice and the (re)criminalization of the distribution of associated information. In the US, the Comstock Act of 1873 banned the mailing and receiving of “obscene” materials, which included contraceptive devices, abortifacients, and related information. Despite Wicksell’s efforts, the Swedish government outlawed contraceptives, abortion, and the public dissemination of any related information in 1910—a reaction to the graphic public lectures being given by Dr. Henrik (Hinke) Bergegren. Wicksell was so aggravated, he threatened to be the first arrested in violation (Carlson Reference Carlson1990).

Although the degree to which Marshall embraced Darwinism is contested (Caldari Reference Caldari2004), his Principles reveals the influence of evolutionary ideas on the social debates of the late nineteenth century. Of particular relevance was (1) the extension of evolution to the ongoing development of human institutions (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, pp. 50, 252); (2) the inevitability of social and physical inequalities; and (3) the implications of “natural and artificial selection” (Marshall [1890/1920] Reference Marshall and Groenewegen2013, pp. 167–168). The combination of the second and third meant for many people that individuals exhibiting inferior qualities should be dissuaded from procreation (Peart and Levy Reference Peart and Levy2003). Marshall, however, questioned the idea of character inheritance, placing more emphasis on environmental factors such as the family setting. Pareto explicitly rejected both Social Darwinism and Darwinian evolution in favor of his own sociological theory of the relation of social mobility, elite turnover, and political outcomes (Reference Pareto1896, 1971; see also Gabutti Reference Gabutti2020; Samuels Reference Samuels2017). Wicksell was also well aware of how Darwinian theories were being applied to human reproduction. He did not support the idea of natural selection as applied to human beings, and neither did he find Darwinian theories for declining fertility rates convincing. In his view, survival of the fittest was cruel and amounted to artificial selection based on class (Wicksell [1910] Reference Wicksell, Strøm and Thalberg1979, p. 134).