Significant changes have taken place in Greece’s birth rate over the past two decades, according to Professor of Demography Vyron Kotzamanis, director of the Institute of Demographic Research and Studies (IDEM), speaking to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA-MPA) based on the Institute’s analysis.

Births in Greece have collapsed, falling from an average of 117,600 a year in 2008-2009 to 65,000 in 2025-26, a drop of 44 percent, while the average age at which women have children has continued to rise steadily (30.2 and 30.3 in 2008 and 2009, compared with 32.2 and 32.3 in 2025 and 2026).

This decline in births, which began in the early 1980s and has continued ever since, with the exception of the 2003-09 period when a small increase was recorded, is mainly attributed to falling fertility among women born after 1960, meaning the number of children they went on to have (2.0 on average among those born in the late 1950s, compared with fewer than 1.5 among those born around 1985).

The recent collapse has also been driven by a shrinking pool of women of reproductive age, with those aged 25 to 44 falling by 480,000 (28 percent) between 2008-09 and 2025-26. According to Professor Kotzamanis, this sharp fall in the size of that age group stems from the fact that fewer people are now reaching reproductive age, a consequence of the drop in births after 1980, and, to a lesser extent, from emigration.

Over the past 15 years, Greece has lost not only part of the smaller generations born in the country 25 to 45 years ago but also large numbers of foreign nationals of the same age who had settled there after 1990.

At the same time, over the past 20 years the total fertility rate has fallen from 1,500 children per 1,000 women in 2008-2009 to 1,240 children per 1,000 women in 2025-2026. The share of births outside marriage has more than doubled (from 7,400 to 17,800), an estimated 10 in 100 children are now born through assisted reproduction, and 63 in 100 are delivered by caesarean section. Over the same period, one in seven births has been to a foreign born mother.

Significant changes have also occurred in the distribution of births by the mother’s age. Today, 30 percent of births are to mothers under 30, compared with 43 percent in 2008-09 and 78 percent in 1980. By contrast, the share of births to women aged 40 and over has nearly tripled (4.5 percent in 2008-09 to an estimated 11.2 percent in 2025-26) and increased sixfold compared with 1980, when it stood at 1.8 percent. It is no coincidence, Professor Kotzamanis notes, that between 2008-9 and 2025-26 births rose only among women aged 40-44 and 45-49, while falling across all other age groups.

Professor Kotzamanis attributes the changes recorded in Greece over the past two decades to the rapid decline in fertility, meaning the number of children born to generations born after 1960, combined with the continuous upward shift in the average age at which women have children, a shift also “facilitated” by remarkable advances in assisted reproduction, to which an increasing number of couples now turn as they choose to have children later in life.

Post-war changes in couples’ reproductive behaviour, reflected in a wide range of indicators, are of course not unique to Greece but are recorded, to varying degrees, in all developed European countries. Professor Kotzamanis notes that common trends, albeit at different paces, have shaped these behaviours across such countries.

These include, among others, a surge in individualism and the emergence of a desire for self fulfilment, rapid urbanisation and a shrinking rural population, the mass entry of women into the labour market, longer time spent by younger generations, particularly women, within the education system, difficulties in securing stable employment and access to housing, obstacles, especially for women, to satisfactorily combining family life with a career, gender discrimination, rising costs of raising a child, and the spread of modern and effective contraceptive methods.

These developments have been accompanied by a decline in the traditional family model in favour of one based on two working parents, whether married or cohabiting, resulting in a rise in births outside marriage, a notably fragile model that has, in turn, driven a rapid increase in single parent households.

According to the same data, Greece differs from many other European countries in that it recorded the largest percentage decline in births of any EU27 country, excluding former socialist states, both between 1980 and 2008-09 and between 2008-09 and 2025-26 (minus 20 percent and minus 45 percent respectively). Greece also belongs to the small group of countries that recorded both the sharpest percentage fall in the number of children born to women born in the early 1950s compared with those born 30 years later in the early 1980s, and the fastest rise in the average age of childbearing, which increased by more than five years between women born in 1952 and those born in 1982.

Professor Kotzamanis concluded: “The distinctive changes recorded in Greece compared with other countries, both in generational fertility (a fall in the number of children women have) and in the age at which they have them (a rise), triggered a renewed collapse in births after 2008-2009, a collapse accelerated by the mass emigration that followed 2010, which further reduced the already inevitable decline in the number of women of reproductive age. The absence in our country of a favourable environment for the younger generations, those who reached family forming age after 2005, meaning people born after 1980, to have their desired number of children, combined with, among other factors, rising unemployment, difficulties in securing stable employment, falling real incomes and, after 2020, the housing crisis, particularly in the large urban centres where these generations are mainly concentrated, has further reinforced a sense of insecurity about the future, inevitably affecting both family formation and the number of children people ultimately choose to have.”

Source: ANA-MPA