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People
Cultural Demography
The total population of Malta today is over 400,000. Malta has been inhabited since prehistoric times by Mediterranean peoples and has been ruled by civilizations stretching from the Middle East to the British Isles.
Its location in the Mediterranean has made Malta a crossroads of cultures and influences. Indeed, Malta has cultural connections with the Phoenicians, Romans, Greeks, Normans, Sicilians, Swabians, Arogonese, Castilian, the Knights, and the British. Despite its closeness to Northern Africa, though, Malta draws very little culturally on its connection to the North Africans although the Maltese language itself finds its roots in that region. Still, Arabs of North Africa have nonetheless influenced Maltese culture.
Present-day Maltese are descendants of ancient Carthaginians and Phoenicians, with strong elements of Italian and other Mediterranean stock. There is a small Jewish community in Malta, along with an even smaller Indian community. Meanwhile, hundreds of Maltese are married to Arabs, mostly Libyans from North Africa and Palestinians from the Middle East. There are also some immigrants from China, Bulgaria, Albania, and Russia. Of note is the sizeable British expatriate population in Malta.
Reflecting this population composition, Malta has two official languages, Maltese and English. Italian is also understood by a large portion of the population since the Maltese vocabulary has been influenced by Sicilian dialects. As noted above, there have been North African influences on the evolution of the Maltese language. Indeed, Maltese is the only European language from the Afro-Asiatic family, which includes Arabic, Hebrew, Berber, and Hausa.
In terms of religious affiliation, 91 percent of Maltese are strong Roman Catholics. The rest of the population cite other religious affiliations or none. Religious festivals factor highly in the calendar year with celebrations and processions for patron saints of villages. Also of note have been the number of pilgrimages that take place. Among these is the annual Franciscan pilgrimage to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Mellieha.
Human Development
The Maltese have an average life expectancy at birth of 77.94 years (75.49 years for males, 80.62 years for females). The infant mortality rate is 5.94 deaths per 1,000 live births. An estimated 88 percent of the population, age 10 and older, can read and write.
About 16.5 percent of GDP is spent on health expenditures in this country; about 6.4 percent of GDP is spent on educational expenditures. Access to education, sanitation, water, and health is regarded to be very good.
One notable measure used to determine a country's quality of life is the Human Development Index (HDI), which has been compiled annually since 1990 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The HDI is a composite of several indicators, which measure a country's achievements in three main arenas of human development: longevity, knowledge and education, as well as economic standard of living. In a recent ranking of the 169 countries covered, the HDI placed Malta in the very high human development category -- at 33rd place.
Editor's Note: Although the concept of human development is complicated and cannot be properly captured by values and indices, the HDI, which is calculated and updated annually, offers a wide-ranging assessment of human development in certain countries, not based solely upon traditional economic and financial indicators.
Written by Dr. Denise Youngblood Coleman, Editor in Chief, www.countrywatch.com; see Bibliography for research sources.
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