Mark Musù chose a flattering frame for Gozo in Saturday's 17 October (Times of Malta). The Permanent Secretary for Social Policy hailed the island's "fertility paradox" as a lesson for the nation. His figures are correct, his question is the wrong one, and his conclusions do not follow.
The data he cites comes from the National Statistics Office (NSO) and demographer Maya Miljanich Brinkworth. In 2025 Maltese women living in Gozo recorded a total fertility rate of 1.49 children. Maltese women living in Malta recorded 1.08, the lowest figure in the European Union. Mothers on both islands had their first child at the same average age of 30.3 years. From these numbers he draws five probable causes and five policy lessons.
Begin with the figure he leaves out of the article. The total fertility rate counts children per woman of childbearing age. It provides no details regarding the count of such women inhabiting the island. Gozo's natural balance tells that second story, and the Public Registry publishes it every January. In 2025 the Registry recorded 340 births and 338 deaths in Gozo. Gozo gained two persons by birth over an entire year. The NSO regional tables for the district depict a more negative scenario. Gozo and Comino recorded negative natural change in 2021, 2022 and 2024. In three of the past five years, the island buried more residents than it christened. Every district on Malta, except the Southern Harbour, grew by births in the same period.
Both facts hold at once, and that is the paradox worth explaining. Women who remain in Gozo have larger families, but the island naturally declines in population. The island's age profile has grown older, and its young adults leave for Malta or abroad. The number of births among a small group of mothers at 1.49 remains below the number of deaths in an ageing population. "Stronger fertility outcomes" does not square with a native population in decline. A Permanent Secretary for Social Policy ought to understand the distinction between a rate and a count.
His second omission, and the more significant one, is the commute. NSO labour figures for 2024 count 4,166 Gozo residents in full-time jobs in Malta. That is one worker in five, and 45 per cent of them work for the state. Musù commends Gozo's "shorter daily journeys" as a valuable time gift for parents. Four in five Gozitan workers enjoy that gift. The fifth endures the longest commute in the country: the ferry queue, the crossing and the drive beyond Ċirkewwa. If time at home drives fertility, these 4,000 households may drag the Gozitan rate down. He never asks whether they do, and the dataset allows the question. His housing argument suffers the same blind spot. Couples from Gozo buy less expensive houses, bearing the expense of crossing the sea every day. Cheap housing and a short commute are the same trade-off, not two separate advantages.
His third oversight concerns the public sector he thinks he has covered. Musù notes that 34.3 per cent of Gozitan mothers work for the state, against 21.5 per cent in Malta. He reads this as proof that public-sector conditions raise fertility. It proves something else: Gozo runs on public employment. The private sector employs 68.5 per cent of Gozo's full-time residents, against 82.6 per cent on Malta. Public administration, education and health form the largest single block of Gozitan jobs, at 28.8 per cent. Gozo has more public-sector mothers because Gozo has more public-sector everything. The fair test compares public-sector mothers in Malta with public-sector mothers in Gozo. If the Gozitan ones still have more children, the cause lies in Gozo, not in the payroll. The NSO holds that data, and the ministry commissioned the exercise. Nobody at the ministry ran the comparison before publishing the conclusion.
The fourth gap is the 9,492 residents he removes from the island. At the end of 2024 Gozo and Comino counted 41,253 residents, of whom 31,761 held Maltese citizenship. Close to three in ten Gozitans by residence are foreign nationals. Musù restricts his 2025 figures to Maltese nationals, a defensible choice for a like-for-like comparison. He then writes about "Gozo" as if the island's demography were the demography of its Maltese women. Gozo's population growth comes from migration, not from the maternity ward. The Registry's 340 births include children of foreign parents, who kept the natural balance above zero. Policy lessons about "the environments in which people live" cannot exclude 29 per cent of the people.
Three further problems undermine the comparison he presents. The first problem is the size of the sample. Gozitan women deliver between 250 and 300 babies a year. A fertility rate that reads 1.36, then 1.23, then 1.49 in consecutive years is statistical noise. He acknowledges the dips and then builds his case on the rebound. The second problem is who stays on the island. This rate counts women resident in Gozo, so every career-minded woman who moves to Malta leaves the denominator. Those who remain lean towards family life, and the Maltese rate absorbs the departed. Part of Gozo's "advantage" is Malta carrying Gozo's emigrants on its books. The third problem is the leap from list to lesson. Musù identifies five causes, admits he has proven none, yet supports all of them. That is a wish-list in the costume of analysis.
His own data backs a single specific conclusion, which warrants a clear declaration. Age at first birth does not explain the gap, since both islands share 30.3 years. Something after the first child does, and nobody yet knows what. That is a research question, not a policy template. The honest next step is a cohort study that matches Gozitan and Maltese mothers by sector, housing and commute. It costs less than one ferry subsidy and answers more.
The irony lands hardest at the ministry's own door. An official in charge of Malta's social policy presented Gozo as the model for the nation. That model has recorded negative natural change in three of the last five years. Its youth depart, its old remain, and its cradles rely on foreign parents to balance its graves. If this is Malta's lesson, Malta should read the whole textbook. Gozo needs policies that keep its young on the island, not a fertility medal.