In a classic “The Fatal Conceit”, the author, F. A. Hayek, writes on the economics and anthropology of population.

“The matters have concerned economics from its origins. The science of economics may well be said to have begun in 1681, when Sir William Petty (a slightly older colleague of Sir Isaac Newton, and among the founders of the Royal Society) became fascinated by the causes of the rapid growth of London. To everybody's surprise he found that it had grown bigger than Paris and Rome together, and in an essay on The Growth, Increase and Multiplication of Mankind he explained how greater density of population made a greater division of labour possible:

Each manufacture will be divided in as many parts as possible. In the making of a watch, if one man shall make the wheels, another the spring, another shall engrave the dial plate, then the watch will be better and cheaper than if the same work were put on anyone man.  

And we also see that in towns and in the streets of great towns, where all the inhabitants are almost of one trade, the commodity peculiar to those places is made better and cheaper than elsewhere. Moreover, when all sorts of manufacture are made in one place; there every ship that goes forth can suddenly have its loading of so many particulars and species as the port whereunto she is bound can take off.

Petty also recognised that 'fewness of people, is real poverty; and a Nation wherein are Eight Millions of people are more than twice as rich as the same scope of land wherein are but four; For the Governors which are the great charge, may serve near as well for the greater as the lesser number'. Unfortunately, the special essay he wrote on 'The Multiplication of Mankind' appears to be lost, but it is evident that the general conception was transmitted from him through Bernard Mandeville to Adam Smith, who noticed, that division of labour is limited by the extent of the market, and that population increase is crucial to the prosperity of a country.

If economists have from an early date been preoccupied with such questions, anthropologists in recent times have given insufficient attention to the evolution of morals (which of course can scarcely ever be 'observed'); and not only the crudities of social Darwinism but also socialist prejudices have discouraged the pursuit of evolutionary approaches. Nevertheless we find an eminent socialist anthropologist, in a study of 'Urban Revolution', define 'revolution' as 'the culmination of the progressive change in the economic structure and social organisation of communities that caused, or was accompanied by, a dramatic increase of the population affected' (Childe). Important insights are also found in the writings of M. J. Herskovits, who states:

The relation of population size to environment and technology on the one hand, and to per capita production on the other, offers the greatest challenge in investigating the combinations which make for an economic surplus among a given people…

On the whole it seems that the problem of survival is most pressing in the smallest societies. Conversely, it is among the larger groups, where the specialisation appears which is essential in providing more goods than are sufficient to support all people, that the enjoyment of social leisure is made possible.