Practice question · Put in order
Order the Malthusian cycle after a positive agricultural shock.
- Income per capita falls back to subsistence
- Population grows, land per person falls
- Better nutrition means more surviving children
- Income per capita rises above subsistence
- A new crop variety increases yields
Hints
- The improvement raises income before anything else responds.
- Population growth is what eventually erases the gain.
Show the answer
- A new crop variety increases yields
- Income per capita rises above subsistence
- Better nutrition means more surviving children
- Population grows, land per person falls
- Income per capita falls back to subsistence
Why
Innovation → income spike → population response → reversion. The cycle is the trap, no step is wrong, but the loop is inescapable without sustained productivity acceleration.
Practise The Pre-industrial Economy
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Business I is free to start.
More questions on The Pre-industrial Economy
- Organic or fossil-fuel economy?
- Match each pre-industrial concept to its definition.
- Medieval European population doubled between 1000 and 1300, then agricultural output per person barely…
- Pre-industrial economies used only energy from recent photosynthesis, muscle, wood, wind, water. Why did that…
- Which factors kept the pre-industrial economy in the Malthusian trap?
- In the Malthusian model, technological progress permanently raises income per capita.
- In pre-industrial Europe, roughly what percentage of the population worked in agriculture?
- Complete the Malthusian logic.