Unfortunately, for a very long time we have been witnessing the obstinacy of sub-replacement fertility in Malta. Fortunately, the majority of our children are being showered by huge emotional support and financial investment from their parents and grandparents, aiming for an improvement in their well-being, educational achievement and increased potential to seize their lifetime chances.
No wonder that such a context, also widely spread throughout the EU, prompted Philippe Airès, a renowned 20th-century French historian of family and childhood, to coin a term ‘the child-king’. In the process of an accelerated second demographic transition, Maltese parents indeed want everything best for that one child. Still, statistics show that some children do not rule the kingdom.
The recently published Eurostat’s news release issued on the occasion of Universal Children’s Day, clearly shows that the well-being of children is indeed hugely dependent on parents’ education. More importantly, it is the mother’s education which in terms of the significance of the outcome, surpasses that of the father.
Eurostat shows that only 5.7 per cent of children in Malta whose parents are highly educated were at risk of poverty or social exclusion (Arope), contrasting the Arope rate of children of low-educated parents at 51.9 per cent in 2015.
A closer look at the Eurostat data reveals that while there was no change in the number of children Arope in Malta (around 21,000 children in 2010 and 2015 respectively), there was an increase in the Arope rate from 26.7 per cent to 28.2 per cent. This increase in the Arope rate is not a result of worsening social protection services but of demographic factors, namely a reduction in the overall number of children under 18 years of age (from 79,268 to 75,464 in the same period).
A year to year analysis shows that there was in fact a decline in the Arope rate, from its highest registered level of 32 per cent in 2013 to 31.2 per cent in 2014 and consequently to 28.2 per cent in 2015. Similarly, the number of children Arope has been also reduced from its highest level of 24,000 in 2013 to 21,000 in 2015.
The well-being of children is indeed hugely dependent on parents’ education
From the researcher’s angle, the most worrying is the triple burden of exposure to poverty and social exclusion, which in our case rests squarely with a small group of around 9,000 persons in 2015, who have been simultaneously exposed to all three predicaments, namely: at risk of poverty (ARP), severe material deprivation and low work intensity.
From a child poverty perspective, this group is the most interesting, as it only includes households with non-retirement age members, i.e. adults with low or nil number of hours spent at work.
However, in this intersection of people experiencing triple hardship, there are some encouraging signs. There was a huge decrease in the exposure of single parents with dependent children, from its highest level of 30.3 per cent in 2012 to 17.1 per cent in 2015.
This indicates that social policy measures such as in-work benefit, tapering of social benefits coupled with family-friendly measures notably, free childcare and after-school care, deliver positive results.
However, not all parents were equally attracted to work, and the increase in the rate of exposure to all three pillars of Arope in two- parent families from 0.8 per cent in 2011 to 2.2 per cent in 2015, calls for a higher activation of both parents. Full-time jobs should be taken up, given the free provision of related child services.
The national figures vouch that a child ARP rate declines as parents’ work intensity increases.
Poverty of children does not come cheap and in some instances cannot be measurable.
It is usually tied to a generational transfer of poverty, typically with a high exposure to self-imposed worklessness, long-term unemployment, perennial dependency on state handouts, crippling thus these children’s access to later chances in life.
Parents’ activation is a direct way out of ARP and social exclusion of their children, not to mention the earned personal fulfilment and recognition. Parents must become more aware that their commitment to work could be more transformative for their children’s future than any form of available social benefits.
Maja Miljanic Brinkworth lectures at the University of Malta.