Youth proportion of population in decline

Malta celebrates Children's Day tomorrow but there appear to be fewer of them around every year, with official figures showing that the number of births in Malta and Gozo has declined significantly since 1995.

The National Statistics Office, which released the figures to mark UN Children's Day, said the crude birth rate has dropped from 12.4 in 1995 to 9.5 last year.

The crude birth rate is defined as the number of births in a given population during a given time period (such as January 1 to December 31) divided by the total population and multiplied by 1,000.

The drop in the number of births in Gozo was sharper than that in Malta - the difference in the crude birth rates between last year and 1995 stood at 2.8 in Malta and 5.1 in Gozo.

The Maltese population aged up to 17 amounted to 86,459 persons, which is 22.1 per cent of the total Maltese population.

The NSO said the proportion of youths within the Maltese population has suffered a steady decrease since 1995, when it stood at 25.9 per cent, 3.8 per cent more than the figure estimated last year.

Last year, just over 51 per cent were males and 48.7 per cent were females. The largest age group was that of 10 to 14, which made up 30.8 per cent of the young Maltese population.

Since 1997, a total of 435 children have been adopted. Twenty eight per cent of the children adopted were Maltese while another 41.8 per cent came from Romania.

Since 1995, the number of adoptions involving foreign children has always been larger than those involving the Maltese.

The percentage of persons dying at the age of 17 or younger of the total number of deaths decreased by 0.7 per cent since 1995.

Over the past 10 years, deaths occurring among males were more frequent than those among females. In fact, while the average number of deaths per year since 1995 among males aged under 18 stood at 27.1, it stood at 19.4 among females within the same age bracket.

Last year, more than 40,000 children attended pre-primary and primary formal education, while approximately 29,500 children attended lower secondary schools. There were 7,866 students aged between three and four years attending pre-primary level, which is 94.3 per cent of all children within this age group.

About 150 children with special needs attended government special schools. The majority of these persons were males. Approximately 1,800 children with special needs, on the other hand, attended regular mainstream education.

Just over half of all primary and secondary schools in Malta have 50 or more computers available for their students. This rate stood at 54.6 per cent among primary schools and 43.2 per cent among secondary schools. The majority of these schools, 88.8 per cent, had Internet available within their premises. From these schools, nearly 90 per cent had either ADSL or cable internet.

The NSO said it also results from the Labour Force Survey that during the year under review, the majority of persons aged between 16 and 17 years were inactive.

In fact, 8,746 or 72.6 per cent did not have a job and were not seeking employment.

From the other 3,293 persons within this age group, 58.7 per cent were employed and another 41.2 per cent were unemployed.

The average annual gross salary by sex within the same age bracket among male employees stood at Lm3,548; it stood at Lm3,069 among the female employees within this age bracket.

Youth membership (members aged five to 19 years) of sport organisations rose from 28,452 in 2003 to 29,783 last year - an increase of 4.7 per cent. The majority of these members were males.