Inflation has “eaten away” at pension increases, resulting in pensioners receiving a cumulative increase of no more than 0.8% in their take-home pay. At the same time, even the population of retirees in Greece… is aging, while the gap between public-sector and private-sector pensions remains wide.
Thus, the real challenge for social security policy does not concern the level of pensions, but rather maintaining real purchasing power and ensuring adequate income for an ever-growing number of older adults.
Specifically, the data from the special analysis by Cepal Hellas and IOBE on pensions show an extremely small improvement in pensioners’ incomes, much smaller than that indicated by nominal income figures. At the same time, they document the accelerating aging of the retiree population, creating new challenges both for income adequacy and for our social security system.
According to IDIKA data, the average old-age pension increased by just 0.8% in real terms during the 2019–2025 period. This trend falls significantly short of the real increase in the minimum wage, which exceeded 30%, while it is marginally better than the trend in the average private-sector wage, which declined slightly in real terms during the same period.
This picture confirms that the increases granted to retirees in recent years have primarily served to maintain their purchasing power rather than to substantially improve their standard of living.
The period of high inflation significantly limited the real benefit of these increases, with the result that the disposable income of most pensioners remained essentially stagnant. It is telling that the largest group of retirees currently receives a primary pension of between 1,000 and 1,500 euros per month.
At the same time, researchers note the rapid demographic aging of the pensioner population, with the largest group being those aged 71 to 75, while the percentage of retirees over the age of 65 rose to 86% in 2025 from 81% in 2019. In contrast, the number of retirees aged 51 to 65 is gradually declining, a trend linked to the increase in retirement age thresholds and restrictions on early exit from the labor market.
It is also interesting to compare pensions between the public and private sectors, with public pensions maintaining a significant lead. In nominal terms, the average primary pension in the public sector rose from 1,162 euros in 2019 to 1,235 euros in 2025, marking a 6.3% increase.
In the private sector, the corresponding average pension rose from 730 euros to 884 euros, a 21% increase. When adjusted for inflation, it turns out that real public-sector pensions decreased by approximately 11% over the six-year period, while private-sector pensions showed a marginal real increase of about 1.3%.
This trend has narrowed the gap between the two categories of retirees. While in 2019 the average public-sector pension was 59% higher than that of the private sector, this advantage narrowed to 40% by 2025.