The first major study of population size and its tremendous importance to the character and quality of society, this classic examines the tendency of human numbers to outstrip their resources.

This book is about the challenge posed by the unprecedented growth of the world's population and the response that has been made to that challenge by the United Nations.

The population and housing census is part of an integrated national statistical system, which may include other censuses (for example, agriculture), surveys, registers and administrative files. It provides, at regular intervals, the benchmark for population count at national and local levels. For small geographical areas or sub-populations, it may represent the only source of information for certain social, demographic and economic characteristics. For many countries the census also provides a solid framework to develop sampling frames. This publication represents one of the pillars for data collection on the number and characteristics of the population of a country.

Capturing Dorothy Hartley’s point that there was "a dislocation of the food supply" during the Industrial Revolution, which occurred through the enclosure movement, the poor laws, the game and corn laws (qtd. in Consuming Fictions 8), this section would begin with the date of Thomas Malthus’s "Principle of Population" (1798) to capture voices invoked during the lead up to the Reform Bill of 1832.