n whose family sizes are larger did much worse in school. The research, published in October's American Sociological Review, found that as family size increases, parents talk less to each child about school, have lower education expectations, save less for college and have fewer educational materials available (CAPS, 1995). Successful steps have been made in fighting the problem of overpopulation. The first step, recognizing the problem, was reached by a British clergyman and intellectual, Thomas Malthus, warned in his Essay on the Principle of Population (1978) of the check on population growth provided by what he believed were coming constraints on food supplies. Malthus pointed out that population tends to grow exponentially while the food production grows only arithmetically; therefore the population must inevitably outgrow the supply of food. The necessary effects of these two different rates of increase, when brought together are very striking. For example take the population of the Earth to be 11 millions; and suppose the present food production can easily support such a number. In the first twenty-five years the population would be 22 millions, and the food being also doubled, the means of subsistence would be equal to this increase. In the next twenty-five years, the population would be 44 millions, and the means of subsistence just equal to the support of 33 millions. In the next period the population would be 88 millions, and the means of subsistence just equal to half that number. At the conclusion of the first century, the population would be 176 millions, and the means of subsistence only equal to the support of 55 millions; leaving a population of 121 millions totally unprovided for (Malthus, 1992). He postulated that population growth was already outpacing the production of food supplies in 18th-century England. Malthus foresaw massive food shortages and famine as an inevitable consequence of population growth...
