Thomas Robert Malthus FRS (13/14 February 1766 - 23 December 1834) was an English cleric, scholar and influential economist in the fields of political economy and demography. In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation’s food production improved the well-being of the populace, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the Malthusian trap or the Malthusian spectre .