The inception of demographic theory in Serbia

Abstract

This text contains an account of the first work on theoretical demography in Serbia, which was written in 1862 by Kosta Cukić, a doctor of philosophy from Heidelberg and the first widely recognised Serbian economist. He dealt with this topic in the second volume of his State Economy textbook, the title of which was Economic Policy. Writing about population problems in economic textbooks was a common European practice at that time. Although he wrote for a textbook, his work was not a retelling of generally accepted theories, but a critical discussion of issues that had not been resolved in contemporary science. Therefore, his work can be considered original in the full sense of the word. In the theoretical sense, Cukić relied on Malthus, but also provided significantly different perspectives on many issues. He accepted Malthus's position that the amount of food is a limiting factor in population growth and that natural fertility is very high due to people’s strong sexual drive. But there were also important differences: in Cukić’s theoretical framework, the iron law of wages does not apply, i.e. wages do not always strive for the existential minimum, as Malthus argued. Cukić also argues that capital affects fertility, since it affects the amount of available resources. Cukić was not a pessimist like Malthus, and instead observed a significant population growth in Europe at the time, without mass famine and pestilence. As we can see, Cukić dealt a lot with Malthus and his theory. This is understandable considering that Malthus was the preeminent theoretician whose work focused on the population problem in those decades, and therefore determination according to his theory and discussion with him was inevitable for anyone who intended to write about population problems. Cukić also dealt with population policy and those aspects of it that were available to the governments of the time: immigration, emigration, and marriage. The basis of his views was strong and consistent liberalism in every respect. Cukić advocated for expanding personal freedoms, such as free decision-making about marriage, and free immigration to the country and emigration from it. In some places he would set minimum technical conditions. "Personal freedom... is the ideal of the political consciousness of the present time". Accordingly, he claimed that "citizens are not just means for governmental purposes", but on the contrary, it is the government's duty to "facilitate and support the aspirations of citizens to particular and general happiness", thus repeating John Locke's idea that the state exists for the sake of citizens, and not citizens for the sake of the state. Cukić belonged to a wide circle of authors in the mid-19th century who fundamentally rejected Malthus's theory: on the one hand, economists who claimed that technological progress and a deepened division of labour would lead to economic progress that would forever postpone the existential crisis that Malthus feared; and on the other, demographers who believed that workers would control their fertility to preserve living standards to a greater extent than Malthus thought possible. Towards the end of the 19th century, the decline of fertility in Western countries provided strong evidence in favour of the latter.