Related, the Malthusian trap, and the paradox of good and bad fortune (in a system which can respond through population growth and decline, and per-capita wealth and decline). As Gregory Clark puts it in A Farewell to Alms: what's virtue is vice, and vice virtue.

That is: increasing prosperity leads to larger populations and less to go around (food, resources, etc.). Calamities such as famine, plague, wars, etc., reduce populations and spawn an increase in per-capita wealth.

This is generally, though not universally, seen to apply to pre-industrial civilisations only.