ABSTRACT
Malta’s welfare builds on a long tradition of discourse favouring high state provision but also a reluctance to pay tax by elites and historical influences from all the main Western European welfare models. The last 20 years have seen fast economic, employment, and immigration growth built on high local skills, focus on services, low corporate tax, and low labour cost. While the latter results in low pension, per capita GDP and female employment fast approach EU averages. Building on the latter basis developed by the preceding Partit Nazzjonalista, Partit Laburista, in power since 2013, has strongly accelerated growth, through wide business-friendliness, deregulation in building and space use, and important initiatives. This, in turn, provided opportunities for further welfare growth. Key welfare expansion has included in-work benefits, free childcare, improvements in anti-poverty benefits, and high-ranking LGBT friendliness. But gains risk being overshadowed or overtaken by lagging lower incomes, eroding pensions, skyrocketing rents, and threats to house tenure and to the environment. Partit Laburista also introduced an unprecedented turn to bold welfare privatisations, raising particular debatable issues.
