This is the third contribution in a series of three on the results of the household budgetary survey conducted by the National Statistics Office. It will deal with data that provide indications on the wealth owned by the Maltese.

Wealth may be described as anything that is owned by people and which has a money value. I am unaware that an estimate has ever been done of the nation's wealth that is the stock of things of value in Malta at a particular moment in time.

There is even less information on personal wealth, which is that part of the national wealth that is owned by individuals in housing, household goods such as cars, televisions and washing machines, valuable items such as gold and jewellery and financial assets such as bank deposits, pension funds, bonds and shares.

This is described by economists as non-human wealth (to be compared with human wealth which is the education, training, skills and work experience of the Maltese) and gives rise to unearned income (that is income not generated from work).

The amount of wealth that an individual possesses also influences his spending pattern and it is relatively easy to understand why. If a person's earned income is increased by unearned income generated from the wealth he owns, he is likely to increase his consumption by using part of that unearned income.

There is also the impact of unrealised income. For example, if a person owns shares in a company and those shares go up in price, that person may feel wealthier, even if he has not actually realised the gain from the increase in value of the shares he owns.

That feeling of being more wealthy is also likely to impact positively on consumption. This is what some refer to as the "feel-good factor".

The reverse is also true. A person's income may have actually risen, but if he feels that he is less wealthy because the value of what he owns has decreased, that may influence him to reduce his consumption.

All this explains why information about certain aspects of a person's wealth was collected as part of the data of the HBS.

We cannot deduce fully what the Maltese own from the HBS as we have no indication on ownership of shares and bonds or the amount of bank deposits that they have or the value of the house they live in or money accumulated in a pension fund or even ownership of valuable items.

However, there is enough that indicates that on average (because the HBS, being a survey that provides aggregate data hides inequalities to a large extent) that we are not as badly off as we may seem to imply when we speak about ourselves, especially when we also take into account information on savings held by commercial banks and the way these have shot up in the last 15 years by more than a billion liri.

The individual average annual total disposable income was estimated by the HBS to be Lm2,721. Of this, Lm297 is contributed by interests on bank deposits held, Lm162 is contributed by dividends paid by companies to shareholders and Lm12 is contributed by rental income.

Assuming an average rate of interest of 3.5 per cent, an income of Lm297 would mean deposits of around Lm8,500 per person. Assuming a crude price to earnings ratio of 9:1, dividends of Lm162 would mean average individual shareholdings worth around Lm1,450; for a total value of just these two financial assets close to Lm10,000 per person.

The HBS does provide some indication of the spread of this wealth. Irrespective of their income flow, households that seem to have accumulated most wealth in financial assets are those where there are no dependent children and where there is at least one member who is over 65.

The geographic spread indicates that households in the Southern Harbour region that includes Valletta, the Cottonera area and towns and villages close by, are the ones that have accumulated least wealth in financial assets, while those living in the Northern region are the ones that have accumulated most wealth, followed by households in the Northern Harbour region.

Another dimension of a household's wealth is whether they own the house they are living in and whether there is an outstanding loan on it. It is significant enough that 57.6 per cent live in a house that they own, with no outstanding loan.

There may be different opinions about an average price of a house, but a price of Lm35,000 would probably find agreement with most people. There is a lower incidence of such home ownership among households living in the Southern and Northern Harbour regions. The region with the highest incidence of home ownership with no outstanding loans is Gozo with 79.6 per cent.

Then there is a range of durable goods owned by households. It is difficult to estimate the value of such goods, but the level of ownership is such as to presuppose a not insignificant level of wealth.

For example, there are three television sets for every two households; all households own a water heating system, a cooker, refrigeration equipment and a washing machine. A third own some type of air-conditioning system, a microwave oven, a personal computer, and nearly all households own a video-cassette player or recorder.

In terms of expenditure there are two items that both indicate the level of wealth of the Maltese household. On average the Maltese spend one per cent of their total expenditure, which is estimated to be around Lm2,500 annually per person, on jewellery, around 2.2 per cent of their total expenditure on package tours and holidays abroad (excluding expenditure abroad).

As I stated in the beginning of this contribution it is difficult to estimate the total wealth of private individuals. However, the data provided by the household budgetary survey does provide some indications. When taking everything into account, a very rough estimate is that on average the accumulated wealth per household is close to Lm70,000.

Whether the bottle is half full or half empty depends on one's perceptions.