VALLETTA, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) -- Thanks to a net migration, Malta's population rose to 460,297 in 2016, the National Statistics Office said on Monday.

When compared with 2015, the population increase in 2016 was mainly due to net migration, said the office.

Foreign nationals accounted about 11.8 percent of the country's total population.

Deduct foreign nationals, the total number of Maltese people living on the islands in 2016 stood at 405,976.

"In 2017, benchmark revisions were undertaken for the estimation of migration flows. National methodologies and data sources were reviewed and updated leading to a revision of the time-series data on population counts from 2012 - 2016," said the National Statistics Office.

By ages, people under 18 made up 17 percent of the total population, while a further 18.8 percent were aged 65 and over.

Life expectancy at birth for 2016 stood at 80.6 years for males and 84.4 years for females.