Editorial: Family-friendly policies benefit all of us

Societies’ prosperity depends on the development of the individuals that comprise them. In turn, each person’s social and economic well-being is directly related to the decisions made by political and business leaders, as they impact their lives. 

Put simply, family-friendly policies are everybody’s business. They benefit young couples raising a family and help children grow in a healthy environment, thereby contributing to society’s well-being.

For decades, different administrations have tried to support young couples raising families by granting children allowances, subsidising first-time homebuyers and granting parental leave.

With Malta’s demographic challenges becoming more acute, it is time to increase the assistance young people need. 

We must create incentives to encourage them to start a family as soon as they can and support them at every stage of caring for their children until they become independent.  

Nationalist MP Albert Buttigieg says that the ever-increasing housing cost contributes to social changes among young Maltese people. He argues: “The fact that you have an increase in property prices is one of the reasons that many of our young couples are deciding to get married and have children later in their lives.”

This could also explain why Malta has one of the lowest fertility rates in the EU. Despite various measures to help first-time buyers get on the property ladder, many young couples still find it very difficult to save enough to make a deposit and then service a home loan, even when both partners are employed. Not everyone can rely on their parents to overcome this daunting obstacle to form a family unit. 

With Malta’s demographic challenges becoming more acute, it is time to increase the assistance young people need

For more than a decade, the economy has prospered on a model based on importing low-cost labour from third countries. This has created demand for more property development and displaced many young couples on modest incomes from the property market.  

Unfortunately, despite policymakers acknowledging this problem, there is little evidence that meaningful plans exist to reduce the demand pressures contributing to inflated property prices. 

Increasing supply by issuing more building permits causes too much collateral damage to the environment, which is so necessary for people’s quality of life. 

Our political and business leaders must move from stating the obvious about the importance of investing in our families to making tough economic, social and business decisions that promote their well-being.  

When economic visions meet reality, it becomes evident that, despite politicians’ declared pious intentions to invest more in financial and human capital, there is still a deficit of concrete plans to achieve our ambitions.  

We must ensure that our young people have better-paid jobs thanks to their higher educational achievement, our businesses rely more on higher productivity, and that social measures focus more intensely on supporting young families.  

As long as our society’s wealth and income gap keep widening, we risk a demographic challenge that will become increasingly difficult to resolve.

Managing the status quo is easy because it guarantees short-term success while burdening future generations with the massive task of resolving today’s structural socio-economic challenges.  

Our political and business leaders must commit to more family-friendly policies contributing to the country’s human development, particularly early childhood. These policies allow mothers, fathers and caregivers to plan for their future by starting a family and then balancing work, personal life and the care of their children.

A good first step could be economic reforms that reduce the demand pressures on the property market.