More than 3,000 single parents were receiving social assistance last year, almost double the number in 2004, according to the National Statistics Office.

Only  Mdina and San Lawrenz did not have single parents on social assistance in 2012.  The figures are found in the NSO’s recent publication Social Security Benefits: A Locality Perspective 2013.

Social assistance is given to a single parent who does not earn more than a certain amount of income and so the figures only give a snapshot of the most vulnerable.

Birkirkara, with a population of more than 21,000, had the largest number of single parents on assistance, 195.

But a more telling analysis carried out by this newspaper shows that, when single parents are taken as a ratio of the locality’s population, the largest concentration is found in Cospicua.

More in the Times of Malta and the e-paper on timesofmalta.com.

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