Before the election, Joseph Muscat famously promised to eradicate poverty under his watch.
Even if one were to forgive the heavy dose of political rhetoric in that statement, it is still depressing to learn that we are farther away from reaching that target than we were a few years ago.
The latest figures show poverty has grown not shrunk.
Nearly 10 per cent of the population were severely materially deprived in 2014, meaning they could not afford to pay for at least four of a number of basic items ranging from utility bills to regular meals of meat or fish.
This is a big increase from the 2008 figure of four per cent. That was the year when economic crisis struck the world. But Malta is supposed to have ridden the downturn well.
How does one explain, therefore, that it saw the third highest increase in the poverty indicator after Greece and Cyprus? There is no doubt about it: inequality here is still on the rise.
The percentage of those still at risk of poverty after taking into consideration social benefits has risen from 15.3 to 15.9 per cent. This measure compares the money people have available for spending or saving with the national median income for that year, so it is a relative figure.
This may partly explain why it has remained so stubbornly stuck at this level even as the country has exper-ienced modest economic growth.
The government claims to have made a small dent in one of the poverty measures. If one puts the risk of social exclusion into the mix – that is, people who do little paid work – then the figure shows a drop from 24 to 23.8 per cent since 2013. That’s not much to boast about.
One hopes that the combination of higher growth, progressively lower unemployment and some of the government’s budgetary measures will soon start to do some serious damage to the poverty statistics.
To be sure, Europe as a whole has also seen a rise in poverty over thelast decade.
Malta is still below the EU average – 24.4 per cent of the population – of those classified as being at risk of poverty or social exclusion. But, again, that’s hardly cause for complacency.
Poverty is a hard nut to crack but, by 2020, the EU wants Malta to have reduced by 6,500 the number of people in this category. The problem is that target was set when the figure was around 80,000. It has now reached 100,000.
To have a reasonable chance of achieving this objective in five years’ time, interventions may need to be more finely targeted.
For example, 60 per cent of single parent households, or 10,000 of them, were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2014. Broad-brush measures like free childcare and after-school programmes, although a step forward because they allow more women to work, may not be enough.
Poverty has social not just economic causes, so the strengtheningof social work services would have a big role to play.
Voluntary organisations involved in efforts to alleviate poverty need serious funding to boost their effectiveness. A heavyweight think tank exclusivelydedicated to poverty reduction would supply another spur.
If the 2020 target is to be reached or, even better, if the social order Dr Muscat envisages is to be created, social mobilisation on a greater scale is required. The poor – or, at least, a lot of them – need not always be with us and it’s about time their numbers start to be reduced.