The government this week announced that the first of two additional Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) payments for 2025 will be paid to families over the coming weekend.
The Social Affairs Minister Michael Falzon announced that over 97,000 families are eligible for the payment – which is a payment which is over and above the usual COLA which is announced every year during the Budget.
Falzon said that the number of beneficiary families has increased after the benefit was expanded by the government, while Permanent Secretary Mark Musu said that the COLA mechanism determines the payment allocated by considering two factors: the family’s/individual’s income compared to 60% of the Equivalised National Median, and the number of persons in the family.
The lower a family’s income is, the higher the extra COLA payment will be, and likewise the larger the family is, the higher the extra payment will be – with the maximum the benefit can rise to being €1,500.
One cannot dispute that this is a good measure of course, as it targets those who are in more vulnerable scenarios rather than simply sticking to a one size fits all approach. It is a good example of a socialist measure that you would expect from a government which presents itself as being a socialist one.
But one also cannot ignore the numerical aspect of this measure. It essentially shows that 97,000 families are considered to be low income – their income stands at 60% of the national median income, or lower. This is the same threshold used in Europe to define when a household is at risk of poverty.
This in itself is a worrying statistic. If one operates under the premise that it takes at least two people to make a family, then it means that there are some 194,000 people at the very least who need government assistance in order to cope with day to day expenses.
That’s equivalent to pretty much half of the country’s local population which is relying on a government cash injection in order to keep up. Something, somewhere is not right if that’s the case.
This being based on the median rather than the average means that it isn’t a matter of a select few individuals getting richer and richer that they are driving up the wealth disparity between those at the bottom and those at the very top.
More likely it means that there are sections of society whose financial situation is improving at a much faster rate than others – effectively, that sections of society are moving forward but others are being left behind.
This is notable, especially within a context where the statistics show – and where the government itself says – that inflation rates are back to what is usually considered to be normal.
So while at face value this is a good measure, it is also worrying that so many individuals are in a position where the government considers that they need extra financial assistance in order to be able to survive and keep up with day to day expenses.
Assistances like this are short-term solutions – like slapping an Elastoplast onto a wound which in actual fact requires stitches. The root issue is what needs to be truly delved into and solved.
