1.3 Pension Beneficiaries
Social protection covers all measures from public or private entities to support households or individuals from a defined set of risks or needs, aiming to reduce poverty and vulnerability within societies. Throughout this domain, users will be presented the principal attributes of Malta’s social protection system, classifying data by ESSPROS function and social protection scheme. In Section 1.1, a review of the gross social outlay along the five-year period between 2020 and 2024 will be conducted. The remaining sections will then shift focus towards the ESSPROS modules; (1) Net ESSPROS (1.2), (2) Pension Beneficiaries (1.3) and (3) Unemployment Benefits Recipients (1.4).
Salient Points
There were 104,599 persons in receipt of a pension, 54.6 per cent being men.
A 1,911 rise in recipients from the previous year.
Old Age type pensions were paid to 79,148 or 75.7 per cent of the total pensioners.
Charts
1.3.1 Pensioners by sex
Reference years: 2015-2024
Methodological Notes
1. Beneficiaries’ data is obtained from the DSS’s Unique Beneficiaries Report.
2. As beneficiaries may be in receipt of multiple benefits simultaneously, aggregates may not necessarily be equivalent to the sum of the corresponding benefits as these recipients will only be counted once.
3. The aim of the PB module is to calculate the total number of pension beneficiaries within the following seven pension categories:
a. Disability pension;
b. Early retirement benefit due to reduced capacity to work;
c. Old-age pension;
d. Anticipated old-age pension;
e. Partial pension;
f. Survivors’ pension;
g. Early retirement benefit due to labour market reasons.
4. In addition to categories listed in 1, pensioners are further classified according to ESSPROS scheme, means-testing and gender. Furthermore, the seven pension categories are classified under the following four ESSPROS functions:
a. Disability: Disability pension, Early retirement benefit due to reduced capacity to work;
b. Old Age: Old-age pension, Anticipated old-age pension, Partial pension;
c. Survivors’: Survivors’ pension;
d. Unemployment: Early retirement benefit due to labour market reasons.
5. Malta’s PB module currently encompasses the following four schemes:
a. Social Security Contributory Benefits;
b. Social Security Non-Contributory Benefits;
c. Service Pensions;
d. MDD/MSCL/MSY Voluntary Retirement Scheme.
