In the last decade, Malta made modest progress on relative poverty and material deprivation but the country’s record on consumption and urban development offers a less encouraging picture, a report has concluded.

The report by the National Statistics Office, out last week, confirms the worrying uptake of agricultural land and the increasing problem of traffic.

Malta’s progress in meeting the targets set out in the United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development has been measured in a 431-page report.

Covering data collected from 2010 to 2019, it provides a snapshot of trends in Malta’s environment and society associated with the highest economic and population growth in the post-independence era. 

The 2030 Agenda, adopted by all UN member states in 2015, is built around 17 goals covering a range of interconnected policy areas and is intended as a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future”. 

Of the nine targets related to poverty reduction that the NSO study assessed, Malta demonstrated improvement in four.

Fewer people are 'severely materially deprived'

The most significant change was in the percentage of the population defined as severely materially deprived, falling from 6.5% in 2010 to 3.6% in 2019, a trend reflected in each age category.

This places Malta below the EU-27 average of 5.6% and on a similar level to Poland and Estonia. 

However, the percentage of the population defined as ‘at-risk-of-poverty’ rose slightly from 15.5% to 17.1%.

The at-risk-of-poverty threshold is set at 60% of the national equivalised income, calculated at €9,212 in 2019.

A higher percentage of women than men were consistently at risk of poverty and the age cohort most at risk of poverty in 2016-2019 were those aged 65 or over, some 27.7% of whom were qualified as at risk in 2019.

Over the previous six years covered by the study, the risk of child poverty was higher.

The share of the population aged 20 that was employed in 2019 stood at 76.8%, up 16.7 percentage points from the employment rate of 2010.

Also, the percentages of both males and females in employment increased. In 2019, the unemployment rate (those aged 15-74 years) stood at 3.6%, down from 6.9% in 2010.

Women’s labour market participation

Avoidable mortality rates fell while life expectancy at birth in 2019 was nearly 83 years, 1.5 years more than 2010 and one of the highest in the EU.

The Maltese population emerges as more qualified and digitally-literate than 2010.

The employment rate of recent graduates in 2019 increased slightly from 2010, reaching a peak of 96.2% in 2016.

Malta made progress on eight of 12 measures of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. 

It is in women’s labour market participation that the most substantial progress was registered, with the 2019 figure of 102,484 constituting an increase of almost 84% on 2010.

The gender employment gap in 2019 was 20.7%, a decrease of nearly 16%.

The gender pay gap also fell over this period, with the average employed woman in Malta in 2019 receiving 11.6% less than men in hourly earnings.

Malta does badly on sustainable urban environments

Malta performed particularly poorly in targets related to the development of sustainable urban environments, achieving progress in just three of 15 metrics.

Most notably, public transport ridership rose by 83.6%.

However, this is countered by an upward trend in new car licences registered and increasing road fatalities.

Malta was the only country in the European Union to record a rise in road fatalities between 2010 and 2017. 

Developed land

The scale of development in the country over the last 20 years is captured by the increase in the percentage of total land area that is developed, from just under a quarter (24.7%) to just over one-third (33.6%) less than 20 years later. 

The share of the population considering their dwelling to have insufficient natural lighting also rose to 10% of households, an increase of 2.6% from 2010.

Speaking to Times of Malta last year, Chamber of Architects vice president Andre Pizzuto tied this to inadequate housing standards, with the construction boom of the last decades also playing a role. 

From material and domestic consumption to per capita ecological footprint and the generation of waste, the report offers what are likely unsurprising but still concerning reading.

The pace of urbanisation and growth in disposable incomes accompanying population and economic growth over the 2010s have contributed to an increase in the ecological footprint of the average Maltese resident well beyond the carrying capacity of the terrain. 

With regard to nature protection targets, Malta performed better in protecting marine than terrestrial environments.

Marine protected areas have expanded and water quality at coastal bathing sites has also improved. The study records a positive trend in the scale of government-led afforestation schemes. 

Between 2010 and 2019, a total of 68,508 new trees were planted in these projects, with 29,268 in 2019 alone.

However, the percentage of land included in the Natura 2000 network, the EU’s flagship protected area programme, has remained static since 2011. 

The report confirms that soil erosion, a major contributing factor to environmental breakdown, is a significant problem.

Here again, the scale of construction and urban development undercut progress on more discrete environmental protection measures.

The percentage of soil lost to water erosion declined but the percentage of surface soil covered by artificial material, such as concrete or asphalt, had increased to approximately 17.1% of the country’s total surface area by 2018.