Looking back 2025 | When fertility became an economic flashpoint

In 2025, a topic once confined to health desks, academic conferences and social pages leapt into the centre of Malta’s economic narrative.

For decades, discussions about low birth rates in Malta had focused narrowly on health and reproductive matters, such as IVF access and genetic screening. But over the past year, low fertility became framed not merely as a social or medical issue but as an economic crisis demanding government intervention. This was the year fertility went from just a private matter to a national economic issue with real stakes for Malta’s future.

In September, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana called Malta’s fertility rate “the greatest challenge of our time”. By late October, the government used the 2026 budget to make fertility a headline economic issue, introducing sweeping income tax cuts for parents, particularly those with two or more children. Under the new measures, parents with two or more children will, by 2028, pay no income tax on the first €30,000 of earnings.

Caruana first set the scene by sounding the alarm on “ethnic extinction” before the budget and later described the tax cut as a means to support families who would like to have a second or third child. It was partly a national survival plan and a social welfare programme.

However, fertility is more complex than a tax cut, and many warned that focusing on financial incentives alone risks oversimplifying deep social shifts.

The Malta Women’s Lobby argued early in 2025 that tax breaks were insufficient unless paired with broader reforms addressing work-life balance and gender equity.

Young Maltese questioned whether money would overcome the real barriers to family formation—housing costs, long work hours and lifestyle choices.

Malta’s total fertility rate is among the lowest in the European Union, around 1.06 births per woman, half the replacement rate.

Meanwhile, Malta’s workforce and pension systems are under pressure as a larger share of the population ages.

Inward migration has been masking population stagnation, but policymakers now acknowledge that immigration alone cannot indefinitely offset low fertility.

These economic concerns helped shift the fertility lens from personal choice to public economic variable.

The government has already launched a Social Plan for the Family 2025-2030, with over 70 actions and recently, the Health Ministry announced young adults can now freeze their eggs and sperm through the public health services to later be used for IVF.

The Nationalist Party has also put forward measures, including a year of paid parental leave funded by the government and a direct investment scheme for every child born.

Though 2025 was the year the issue broke into mainstream economic discourse, fertility will continue to be analysed in the years to come. Whether there’s time to turn back the clock is yet to be seen.