By Professor Anastasios Tamis
In an earlier article I referred to the worst national enemy of Greece: low birth rates. From the late 1990s it had become clear to Greek demographers and social scientists that the number of births in Greece was falling noticeably and dangerously. Temporarily, the number of births, despite the downward trend, offered some sense of optimism, when the fertility rate of Greek women of Albanian origin approached numerically that of Greek women.
In a few years, the number of children born to Albanian parents who lived in or had been born in Greece almost surpassed the number of children born to parents of Greek origin. If to the above data we add the fertility shown by other Greeks but of non-Greek origin citizens, then the shrinkage is mitigated and the ageing is temporarily slowed.
Before we pass on to the observations made by researcher demographers and analysts, I would like to insist that over the last forty years, the native Greeks insist on absolving themselves of any responsibility for fertility, and to declare as responsible for the tragic demographic decline that shakes our metropolitan homeland, supposedly the state of successive governments, low incomes, poverty, hardship, high prices, the impossibility of providing education and the constant “we can’t manage, my brother”.
The transfer of responsibility from the self-seeking mentality of the Greek individual himself, who for decades now has learnt to function as a private person and not as a citizen, who has based the values of his life on the egocentric way of life, self-love, personal satisfaction, the “who cares” attitude, the easy-going pleasure seeker, demonstrate that in Greece and in the majority of the developed countries of Europe, the return to a society that gives priority to the values of family, to the social dogma that supported human ontology for thousands of years, is delayed.
A recent study from Brussels concludes that the problem of insufficient fertility plagues almost all the countries of Europe, except Bosnia, whose dominant religion is Islam. The same study notes that by 2060 the number of Muslims in Europe will surpass the number of Europeans who declare themselves Christian, and therefore will numerically constitute the first European religion, with the number of Atheists and agnostic atheists second, and Christians third.
In 1970 the number of inhabitants of Turkey amounted to 34 million and the number of Greeks to about nine million. In 2025 the number of Turks exceeded 87 million and that of Greece 9.6 million. In 2050 it is estimated that the population of Turkey (to whom Mr Erdoğan distributes cheap onions so that they can live) will surpass 100 million and the number of Greeks will decrease to 8.5 million, the same as it was in 1970!
The prediction that in the next three decades the decrease of the population of Greece and its demographic ageing will continue, while the balance of births/deaths will remain negative, was made last week by the Laboratory of Demographic and Social Analyses – University of Thessaly.
In the relevant analysis entitled “Demographic and low birth rates in Greece today: demographic inertia and social challenges”, whose author is Iphigenia Kokkali, assistant professor and director of the Laboratory, the collapse of births is underlined, which in 2023 reached 72.3 thousand, that is, were about half of those recorded annually on average in the 20-year period 1951-1970. According to this research, the population of Greece has decreased by 500,000 people in recent years, while the demographic collapse continues, under the pretext of supposed social challenges, which, in a sleight-of-hand way, do not touch Muslim populations, but operate as safety valves of protection and enjoyment exclusively for Greeks. Bravo to us.
The analysis notes that today Greece records one of the lowest annual fertility rates in the European Union, with intergenerational fertility moving at 1.3–1.4 children/woman (in the generations born around 1980), that is, significantly below the reproduction threshold (2.07 children/woman). In Australia, the total fertility rate of Australian citizens of Greek origin amounted in 2024 to 2.2 (that is, double that of Greeks within Greece).
At the same time, Greece is a relatively aged country since almost 23% of its inhabitants are over 65 years old, while in 2023 those over 65 were almost one million more than young people aged 0–14. At the same time, a progressive increase of childlessness rates is observed, which for the generations around 1980 now concern about 1 in 5 people.
The decrease of the population of Greece, which essentially began in the early 1990s, began to appear noticeably from 2011, precisely because of the mass entry of foreigners between 1991 and 2010, which resulted in a positive migratory balance of 795,000 people.
The research of Mrs Kokkali concludes: “The mass entry of young people in search of work contributed, among other things, to the slowing of the ageing of the population of Greece, to the increase of its birth rate and to the strengthening of its demographic dynamism, given that the increase of the population of the country between 1991 and 2011 is attributed almost exclusively to the increase of the number of foreigners. The financial crisis changed the direction of flows and the balance of entries and exits became once again negative, as in the pre-1990 era. During the decade 2011–2021, the exits continued, and concerned, on the one hand, the economic migrants who, having settled in the country during the two previous decades, now return to their countries – on the other hand, they concern the young Greek men and women (25–34 years old but also 35–45 years old), who emigrate.”
The painful finding of the research follows: “In the already burdened population structure of the country, we could say schematically that the framework of life in Greece today seems either to push young people to flee, or to childlessness. And these are very basic stakes, in the case that we would like to limit low birth rates and the extent of the decrease of the population of the country in the coming decades.”
However, I would like to emphasise that beyond and above the conclusions of Mrs Kokkali, there are not highlighted as social variables of her research and not mentioned in detail other causes which concur and which shape the mentality of negative fertility and childlessness which plagues the Greek family. For example, such as the free cohabitation of young couples, the departure from the parental family home, the sad and often unnecessary increase of divorces, the degeneration of issues relating to human genders and ontology (which from time-to-time constituted laws of the Greek state), the lack of state support, including housing and work, the average age at marriage which has now shifted into the decade of the thirties for women.
