Greece’s aging population continues to decline, new data reveals, as the country’s demographic crisis shows no signs of abating.
According to data released on December 31 by ELSTAT, Greece’s national statistical authority, as of January 1st, 2025, the country had a permanent population of 10,400,720 people (5,096,893 men and 5,303,827 women), a 0.1 percent decrease from 10,413,982 people in 2023.
The decline is the result of a natural population decrease as deaths continued to surpass births (127,169 deaths compared to 71,249 births).
What appears particularly alarming, based on the ELSTAT data, is that as the population of Greece has been steadily declining, the aging indicator for the country has skyrocketed in the last fifty years, up to almost 180, from 43 fifty years ago.
What has been countering the population decline is the increase in inbound migration, with 42,658 migrants and refugees or asylum seekers totaling net migration.
During the peak of the refugee crisis between 2016 and 2019, the equivalent recorded inflow reached a cumulative total of about half a million people. Despite the gradual decrease that followed in the coming years, 2023 saw an increase in the number of migrants and asylum seekers coming to Greece, with over 118,000 arrivals.
ELSTAT calculates Greece’s population for 2024 based on the annual figures for Natural Population Movement in 2023 (births-deaths) and migration movements.
Greeks continue to leave the country in search for a better life
At the same time, Greeks continued to leave the country (external migration), albeit in smaller numbers, with 76,158 individuals deciding to leave their place of residence for at least a year. External migration includes the phenomenon of brain drain, the migration of a country’s highly educated workforce, which persists in Greece. In 2022, over 80,000 people left Greece.
In the decade during Greece’s economic crisis (2010 to 2020), external migration nearly tripled, with over 100,000 people leaving Greece annually between 2012 and 2018.
Greece’s government has recently launched an initiative called “Rebrain Greece,” aiming to lure back to the country thousands of highly skilled and educated Greeks who have left in the past years in search for better working opportunities.
Greece’s demographic decline has turned into a crisis
Greece is currently one of the most aging countries in Europe and, according to OECD projections, it is expected to become the most elderly country on the continent by 2050.
According to OECD’s recent report “Health at a Glance: Europe 2024,” by 2050 more than 35 percent of the Greek population will be over 65, posing a severe threat to the economy, the labor force, and the societal cohesion of the nation.
Most other Mediterranean nations follow Greece, including Portugal, Italy and Spain.
Politicians and policy-makers have taken into account the significance of the matter, both in the preservation of the wider socio-cultural fabric and in preventing future economic turmoil.
In 2023 the Greek government established the Ministry of Social Cohesion and Family, whose primary aim was to solve the demographic crisis.
The “Birth Grant” and the “Voucher Program” both have a financial incentive, aiming to encourage an increase in the birth rate.
Emigration and an aging population are just some factors contributing to Greece’s growing demographic crisis. The head of the Ministry of Social Cohesion and Family has called it the “biggest threat facing Greece,” emphasizing the wide-ranging impacts, including the risk of cultural gentrification.
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