In demographics, the numbers leave no room for complacency. In 2015, almost 92,000 children were born in Greece. A decade later, in 2025, only 65,594, with a rate of decline approaching 30%.
Moreover, in just the last five years, births have fallen by more than 22%, while the fertility rate dropped from 2.38 children per woman in 1974 to just 1.24 in 2024.
The problem is not theoretical, nor exclusively social. As Eurobank chairman pointed out at Media2Day’s recent conference Giorgos Zanias, today for every 100 people of productive age there correspond about 42 people over 65 years old.
In less than three decades, according to OECD estimates he cited, those 42 will have become more than 70, while the population aged 20-64 is estimated to have shrunk by more than 30%.
These changes will result in a drastic reduction of the workforce, increased pressure on the pension system and the healthcare system, as well as an intensification of problems in the Greek regions.
In this light, Attica regional governor Nikos Hardalias, at the same event, quite rightly described addressing the demographic issue as a “patriotic issue”, noting that it requires “courage in decisions, in measures and in policies.”
The government measures and the two “schools”
Recognizing the scale of the problem, in recent years the government has significantly strengthened its family support policy.
The birth allowance was increased for each child and was accompanied by new benefits, strengthened infrastructure and services, and new tax measures, within the framework of a National Action Plan for Demographics, which provides for more than 100 actions through 2035.
All this is necessary. It does not, however, seem to be sufficient.
Among experts, but also politicians, we have found that there are two different “schools”.
The first treats low birth rates as an extremely difficult-to-reverse phenomenon of the modern era and places the main emphasis on what the state can do to reduce, through material means, the obstacles to having children.
No one doubts that a young couple struggling to rent a decent home or arrange childcare will think long and hard before taking the big step, and even more so before proceeding to a second child.
The second school, however, adds another, very important dimension, concerning perceptions.
Let us leave aside for a moment three or more children and focus on the critical step from the first to the second child, because this decision nowadays does not much resemble the transition from none to one.
With the first child, what we usually call a “family with children” has already been created. The second requires additional financial cost, more space, more organization, and a new burden on professional life.
But this is also where perceptions intervene. When do we consider it the right time to have children, how many children do we consider a “normal” family, and how much space are we willing to leave for family within the rest of our life pursuits.
The factor of time is particularly important, since the age at which people have their first child in Greece has increased impressively and now stands at around 31 years.
But the later the first child comes, the smaller, for biological as well as practical reasons, the time margin for the second.
“These are imposed by the demands of modern life, professional ambitions, and the growing emphasis on the individual path,” many will say. “After all, what are we supposed to do, send women back home?”
Israel’s bright exception
There is, however, geographically very close to us, a country with several common characteristics (small population, strong family ties, external threats), which for decades has avoided the problem that the rest of the developed West acquired. Israel.
And we are not talking here about the ultra-Orthodox or Muslims, but about secular, educated, and working Jewish women, who achieved something almost unique among developed economies.
To study more, participate massively in the labor market, have their first child at an older age than in the past, and at the same time maintain their fertility above two children per woman.
Why did this happen? Because they live in a society where work and motherhood were not regarded as opposing choices, where the help of the extended family remains strong, and where children are more integrated into everyday social life.
And so two or three children remained a normal expectation, and not an exception.
Israel of course has significant state benefits, childcare, and an extremely supportive assisted reproduction system. It does not, however, have the most generous welfare state in the OECD. There are developed countries that offer the same, perhaps even more.
The big difference is that Israel’s material policies “clicked into place” in a society that still wanted more children and fully recognized the importance of the family.
The “golden” number for Greece
Matters of perception certainly do not concern only women. International studies show that the more the father participates in housework and caregiving, the more the chances increase that a working mother will have a second child.
For today’s Greece, therefore, where the fertility rate has fallen to 1.24, the “golden number” is two children, without this of course meaning that systematic support is not required for those who wish to have three or more.
The critical distance between one and two children is reduced by cheaper housing, better incomes, childcare, work-family reconciliation, systematic information about fertility, as well as full support for those facing medical problems.
But it is also connected with social perceptions and habits that make the transition from one child to two easier, not only materially and practically but also as a perception of life.
Perceptions do not change through sermons. They are influenced when workplaces do not treat motherhood as a disadvantage, when the father takes on a real share of family life, and when many children are not socially treated as something unusual or excessive, but as an example of a balanced and “full” life.
In a country that risks entrenching “none or one” child as the new normal, this may be the most important battle of the next decade.