This study analyses changes in income inequality in Malta and its driving factors between 2005 and 2018. The study employs and analyses data collected by Malta’s National Statistics Office, which conforms with the European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions. Education and labour status are identified as key drivers behind income inequality changes over the period under review. While the Gini coefficient remained relatively stable between 2005 and 2018, the Lorenz curve moved further away from the line of equality at the upper end of the income distribution, showing modest increases. Over the 2014-2018 period, Government intervention has been mildly neutralizing through social transfers but not through taxes. Social transfers provided a greater safety net to citizens than they did during the 2005-2009 period, whereas tax reforms have abraded some tax progressivity. We also find that inequality was mostly attributed to differences in the individual’s qualifications, hours worked, occupations, and household employment structure and size, highlighting an important role for policy to further reduce the barriers to economic inclusion.
We set out to examine the relationship between cultural engagement and wellbeing in a European Union state, Malta. We specify a conceptual model of wellbeing, captured by self-assessed life satisfaction as the predicted variable. Armed with a rich dataset (n = 1,125), drawn from a nationally representative sample, we construct variables that capture the diverse forms of cultural participation including a variable that identifies artists. We test three hypotheses, namely that passive cultural participation (audience) is positively associated with life satisfaction, that active (productive) cultural participation is positively associated with life satisfaction, and that artists have a higher level of life satisfaction, all else being equal. We find that both active and passive participation activities are associated with higher levels of life satisfaction; that active participation (including production, donation and travel) manifests a stronger relationship with life satisfaction than passive participation; and that life satisfaction is higher among those who identify as artists even after the effects of all other control variables are parsed out. This being the first nationally representative study on life satisfaction in Malta, the study makes a useful contribution in this regard, finding that factors like employment, health, engagement in sport, politics, religion, environment, as well as region of residence and migration are all significant correlates of life satisfaction.
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