This text contains an account of the first work on theoretical demography in
Serbia, which was written in 1862 by Kosta Cukic, 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, Cukic 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 Cukic?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. Cukic also
argues that capital affects fertility, since it affects the amount of
available resources. Cukic 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, Cukic 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.
Cukic 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. Cukic 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. Cukic 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.
