Poverty is not inevitable. While the poor will always be with us, blaming poorpeople for their own predicament is a fallacious mindset that demonstrates a defeatist attitude to the eternal challenge of combatting poverty.

Figures tabled in Parliament show that 11 per cent of Cospicua residents qualify for food packages under the EU food aid scheme, presumably because they themselves cannot provide for basic food requirements. The Cottonera area is not unique in having a significant number of people depending on handouts to survive. Other areas, like Floriana, Valletta and St Paul’s Bay, also have significant numbers of people living in poverty.

The Fund for the European Aid for the Most Deprived (FEAD) coordinator, Stephen Vella, is right when he says that some families are very knowledgeable about the social benefits system and manoeuvre in such a way as to enable them to constantly try to take advantage of society’s safety net. Such a mentality, he stresses, needs to be challenged to eradicate the continual attempt to beat the system.

Making poor people dependant on State handouts to survive is not an effective strategy to deal with poverty. Social policymakers must first acknowledge what really lies behind the problem if they are to define an effective strategy to deal with the root causes. The causes of poverty are universal. Even rich countries, like the US, have to deal with the challenge of combating poverty within society as much as those that have weak economies.

One of the main causes of poverty is inadequate educational achievement of people who need to work to support themselves and their families. Our educational system has for decades failed a large proportion of young people who eventually leave school almost as illiterates. It is no surprise that they would have to struggle throughout their lives to find employment. Improvements are being achieved but many argue that the educational strategy that guarantees educational success for young people who come from a disadvantaged background is still ineffective.

Another cause of poverty is the breakdown of the traditional family unit that promoted cohesion in western societies. In the US, for instance, statistics show that in families where both parents live together, child poverty amounts to 11 per cent. In single parent families, 44 per cent of children live in poverty.

It is crucially essential that social policymakers devise schemes that encourage both parents to support their children, even if single parent families should never be ostracised.

Globalisation has widened the gap between the rich and the poor in western economies. Low-skills jobs are fast disappearing and the few that remain are badly paid as the demand for such jobs by those with low educational qualifications increases. The influx of immigrants is adding to the demand for low-skilled jobs.

Even if our educational system were to be more effective in providing young people with the skills needed to acquire adequately paid work there will always be thousands of people who either because of poor physical or mental health or social deprivation will find it difficult to find employment. Government-assisted schemes that encourage employers to take on such disadvantaged workers should feature prominently in the strategy to combat poverty.

Measuring the country’s success in terms of GDP growth or low unemployment rates is at best inadequate. Social metrics need to be built in the formula for success. Creative strategies to combat the causes of poverty are a must if society is to be more human.