Nearly one in four people in Greece is aged 65 or older, placing the country among the oldest populations in the world and underlining the scale of its demographic challenge.
World Bank data for 2024 show that 23.94 percent of Greece’s population was at least 65 years old. Among other nations, only Monaco, Japan, Italy and Portugal recorded higher percentages. Monaco topped the ranking at 36.17 percent, followed by Japan at 29.78 percent, Italy at 24.62 percent and Portugal at 24.53 percent.
The figures are based on the United Nations Population Division’s World Population Prospects and show how heavily the ranking is concentrated in Europe. Finland, Germany, Croatia, Serbia and San Marino are also among the countries with the largest shares of residents aged 65 and above.
There is one technical distinction in this particular global ranking. World Bank-linked tables also list Puerto Rico, a US territory, at 24.72 percent. If territories and other economies are counted separately, Greece ranks sixth overall; when the comparison is limited to sovereign countries, it is fifth.
Greece’s 23.94 percent is more than twice the global average of roughly 10 percent. The gap reflects a wider ageing trend across most of Western Europe, but Greece has been changing particularly quickly. Eurostat reported in February that the median age of the Greek population rose by 3.8 years between 2015 and 2025, one of the largest increases recorded in the European Union.
The ageing of Greece cannot be explained by longer life expectancy alone. The country is also dealing with persistently low numbers of births and a long-running natural population decline. Official Greek statistics recorded 68,467 live births in 2024, compared with 126,916 deaths, leaving a natural decrease of more than 58,000 people before migration –both towards the country and out of it– is taken into account.
The transatlantic longevity gap
The World Bank figures fit into a wider pattern in which Europe generally has older populations than the United States. A 2025 study led by researchers at Brown University and published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that Americans aged 50 to 85 had higher mortality rates than comparable Europeans across all wealth levels during the period studied.
Experts believe that this is due to structural factors in the United States including higher economic inequality, lack of a Public Healthcare System, stress, poorer diet compared to what Europeans have and environmental risks as possible contributors to the survival gap.
For Greece, however, the immediate demographic picture is shaped by both longevity and the shrinking size of younger generations. With almost a quarter of the population already over 65, the country has become one of the clearest examples of Europe’s accelerating population ageing.
Life expectancy
Greece compares relatively well on life expectancy. According to the latest Eurostat figures, life expectancy at birth in the country stood at 81.9 years in 2024, slightly above the European Union average of 81.5 years. Greece ranked joint 15th among the EU’s 27 member states, alongside the Netherlands, while Spain recorded the highest life expectancy in the bloc at 84.0 years, followed by Sweden at 83.8 and Italy at 83.7.
The contrast with the United States is more evident. Final data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that American life expectancy reached 79.0 years in 2024, meaning that people in Greece could expect to live, on average, 2.9 years longer than Americans. The figures show that Greece’s ageing population reflects not only low birth rates and demographic decline, but also comparatively high longevity.
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