English scholar Thomas Malthus builds a theory that overpopulation will cause a rising supply of labor that will inevitably lower wages and cause poverty and hunger, as well as place an economic burden on the ruling class. This theory will go on to form the basis of population control ideology, thereby fueling a racial and religious fervor that blames environmental degradation on the fertility of women of color and attempts to justify the forced sterilizations of Indigenous, Black, and Latinx women to avert the decline of the white "majority."