Efforts to address dwindling birth rates need to go beyond merely “opening up more childcare centres”, the University’s Labour Studies centre head believes, as data confirms the Maltese are having the fewest babies in Europe.
At 1.26 births per woman, Malta’s fertility rate is not only the lowest in Europe but women are having the fewest number of babies in more than a decade, an issue that the centre’s director, Anna Borg, insists needs to be urgently addressed.
In comments to the Times of Malta following Eurostat’s publication of data on fertility, Dr Borg said that workers in Malta had more restriction when they came to having children because there has not been enough investment in promoting a so-called “dual-earner” culture where both women and men may choose to work or raise children.
That meant that women were still being forced to choose between having a career and having children, Dr Borg said.
“We have done some things to address the situation but in reality these have been rather futile.
“We may think that we have solved the problem by introducing free childcare, for instance, but no, we haven’t,” Dr Borg said.
The Labour Studies director had warned in the past that if pressures that women faced when they had children were not addressed, the birth rate will not improve.
Family leave is not generous enough
Asked whether she was concerned that despite efforts in recent years, not only these have failed to yield significant results but the rate was at its lowest in a decade, Dr Borg reiterated that “much more needs to be done”.
“Family leave in Malta is not generous enough. Paid maternity leave is just 18 weeks. You cannot expect a woman to be ready to return to work in such a short period of time,” the director stressed, pointing out that paternity leave remained unpaid.
For there to be any significant change, Dr Borg said, the issue needed to be taken much more seriously, adding that changes to the law would also have to be considered in order to better address certain issues.
According to the Eurostat data for 2017, the year under review, the fertility rates were lowest in southern countries and following that of Malta, the fertility rate in Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Greece and Portugal were the lowest across the EU.
The highest rates were reported in France, Sweden, Ireland, Denmark and the UK while the EU average stood at 1.59 babies per woman.
It also emerged that, on average, women in Malta are 29 years old when they give birth to their first child, the same age as the European average.
In the year reviewed, there were a total of 4,319 births in Malta.