Finally, it is important to describe Malthus’s legacy and the reception of his findings. Malthus created such an impact in future research about demography, that his theory is now regarded as an approximate natural law of population measure for all species (Pullen, 2004). In addition, Malthus’s ideas not only promoted the creation of a national population census in the UK (1801), but also helped pass the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act which provided consolation for the poverty-stricken (Caldwell, 1998). Also, Malthus’s writings have become the standard for a lot of demographic issues. While some writings originate from Malthus’s work, others refute it. In 1838, Charles Darwin searched for a mechanism explaining the transmutation of species. Having read Malthus’s work, Darwin “grasped the possible implication of the checks that controlled population growth and wrote: ‘…favorable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be destroyed’” (Dunn, 1998,p.77). Darwin then published his book On the Origin of Species. On the other hand, some scholars critique Malthus’s findings. Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher, “turned Malthus around to argue that population pressure was necessary for human perfectibility, to encourage fitness through competition” (Slocombe,1993,p.77).
