Editorial

A survey carried out by the National Statistics Office revealed that nearly 57,500 persons, or 15 per cent of the population, fell below what is called the "at risk of poverty" line. The latter is an international invention and is calculated by working out the ratio of a household's regular income to its consumption. The calculation is called "the national equivalised income", or NEI.

Regular income is what it is all about. The vast majority of us earn this type of income whether we work for somebody or for ourselves as self-employed pillars of society. We work regularly and as regularly get paid. This is not the case for all of us.

A number do not go to work, regularly or even irregularly for one reason or another, some good, some bad. The statistical ratio worked out by the NSO showed that where nobody in the household worked, the "at risk of poverty" rate was 39.6 per cent. This figure fell to 25.3 per cent if there was a pension as the main source of income.

What is the poverty line, though? It is 60 per cent of the NEI median, which, in the case of Malta, is estimated at Lm3,394. If you work out 60 per cent of that, you arrive at Lm2,036, a sum that is less than the minimum wage. It is immediately apparent, here, that a person who receives that amount may psychologically conclude that if he can receive such a sum without working officially (this is the operative word), it may pay him, or her, to do so rather than go out to work officially and earn a minimum wage that is only marginally higher.

This approach is not peculiar to Malta. There is something pretty universal about a wage earner's psychological approach to receipts and work. It may therefore colour the NSO statistics in the sense that within these percentages are to be found those who qualify for being "at risk of poverty" but do not, in fact, because there is such an activity as moonlighting. It would be wrong and cynical, however, to conclude that this approach covers all, or the majority even, of those who are at risk.

The poorest one-fifth of the population fall below an NEI level equal to Lm2,261. Over half those at risk are females and over a third of these were under 19. This, in particular, is a complicated statistic to follow.

One staggering statistic showed, but hardly proved, that the richest fifth of the population earns 4.5 times more than the poorest one-fifth. This is a statistic that can be taken with a pinch of proverbial salt. It highlights the fact, if nothing else, that too many people earning far more than that - developers, plumbers, electricians, plasterers, doctors, lawyers, professionals of every hue - are submitting income tax returns that bear little or no resemblance to their real income.

This still leaves us with the problem of households that have no income apart from a pension and others that have no pension but receive other benefits. The study shows that 79.1 per cent of those 57,500 persons live off social benefits, excluding pensions.

There is a great deal of work for the department concerned to explain whether it has this business of people asking for benefits to which they are not entitled under any form of control and for another to make sure it can offer assistance to those who fall below the NEI level to find work.