A demographic disaster is gripping a lot of Europe, and Greece is among the many international locations going through the brunt of it.
It has one of many lowest fertilities within the area—at par with different international locations peeved by the identical challenge, like China and Japan—which the Greek prime minister has referred to as a “ticking time bomb.”
Delivery charges within the nation have persistently declined yr after yr, with 2022 marking a near-century lowest.
The federal government is now taking motion to avert a potential demographic decline because the financial system ages and the necessity for labor grows.
Final week, Greece introduced a collection of measures to assist carry its start price by means of extra childcare advantages and tax breaks for fogeys.
The European nation spends €1 billion a yr on selling childbirth, Reuters reported, and already affords incentives akin to maternity advantages and allowances on child gadgets. The brand new measures are a part of the federal government’s plans to boost start charges.
However efforts to encourage individuals to have extra kids shall be in useless with out financial boosts that go hand-in-hand with it, as Greece is the European Union’s second poorest nation. So the nation additionally introduced an increase in pensions and minimal wage from subsequent yr.
A mix of social and financial components explains Greece’s predicament. About twenty years in the past, an financial tailspin plunged the nation into deep debt and austerity, dwarfing Greeks’ employment prospects and resulting in their emigration for higher alternatives overseas. Whereas Greece has seen its inhabitants ebb and movement by means of wars, it misplaced its most expert expertise throughout the monetary disaster. These have created far-reaching results, together with the nation’s labor scarcity and the continued demographic decline.
The Greek financial system is in a greater place at present, having grown 2% in 2023; nevertheless, continues to be considerably smaller than in 2007. Challenges like excessive unemployment and inflation proceed to affect the choice to begin and develop households. An ageing inhabitants may additional stress its financial system, which already has a excessive debt burden.
It may be exhausting to interrupt out of a pattern intrinsically tied to individuals’s lifestyle.
However a minimum of Greece shares its complications with different international locations akin to Italy. Russia is going through a demographic decline, too, albeit for various causes triggered by its Ukraine invasion.
Hungary is going through an analogous conundrum. It’s providing loans of €30,000 in addition to subsidies to individuals within the hope that they are going to contemplate rising their households.
Finally, reversing the social material in international locations doesn’t occur in isolation—it’ll want financial and monetary insurance policies to be in lockstep.