Minister for Social Cohesion and Family, Sofia Zacharaki, presented on Wednesday a series of measures aiming to address Greece’s demographic problem of aging population and declining birth rates.
Starting in 2025, the National Action Plan for the Demographic Problem has a 10-year horizon and unfolds along five main lines, while it has 20 targets and involves more than 100 actions.
Its aim is to develop the strategy, define the goals, shape the policies and implement the appropriate measures to alleviate the impact of unfavourable demographic changes to fiscal sustainability, long-term competitiveness, prosperity and social cohesion.
It does not confine itself to efforts to boost births but aims at a comprehensive management of the impact of the change in the age structure of the population.
Emphasis will be given to creating a favourable environment for having a family, boosting employment, managing the longevity and well-being of the citizens, promoting local development, as well as informing the citizens and raising awareness and mobilizing the society.
The statistics and the forecast models for the demographic developments are foreboding. But we have an obligation to all make a big effort together to overcome this,” she said.
The more than 100 actions envisaged under the programme will have a combined budget of 20 billion euros, including some measures already implemented since 2019.
They include action to increase the engagement of the elderly in the economy, such as employment and university education for older people, better elderly healthcare and resilience and more support services for elderly people, action to support fertility and reproductive health as well as the dissemination of information on the relevant issues.
It will also seek to dovetail with overlapping national action plans dealing with various social issues, such as those for gender equality, child poverty and exclusion, disable rights, mountain and island living and others.
Based on the findings of the 2021 census, Greece’s population had declined 3.5% relative to the previous census in 2011 and by nearly 5% since 2001. Since 2011, there have been more deaths than births, which in 2022 fell below 80,000 for the first time, from 150,000 in 1980.
Half the country’s population is now over 46 years old, and more than 1 in five residents of the country are over 65 and 6% are over 80.
“ The statistics and the forecast models for the demographic developments are foreboding. But we have an obligation to all make a big effort together to overcome this,” minister Zaharaki said among others while presenting the draft.
In all developed countries there has been a sustained transfer of wealth from the middle classes to the wealthiest in society since 1971. As the middle classes get increasingly empoverished they reduce the number of children they have. That is the root of the problem and the only thing that will solve it is to reverse the trend. I see no signs of that happening.
When I was young, in the neolithic era, a family could be supported by one person working on an average wage. Today it typically takes two adults working two jobs each to support a family.
Too right! The middle class is being destroyed by inflation and taxation and a wealth transfer is happening.
It is almost like what happens in the animal world. There, only the alpha male and female are allowed to reproduce and the rest of the pack only serves them and their offspring.