Greece’s population is in freefall, with predictions it will drop by 20 percent by 2050. ABC travels to Greece to investigate the silent crisis firsthand.
Greece’s rural areas have continued to suffer wave after wave of population loss. Nikki and John are farmers in Limni. Their son, George, is the last child in the village. There are so few children, the government doesn’t send a schoolbus, but a taxi. Last year, 5% of schools in Greece shut down due to low enrolment. “Young people aren’t getting married and they leave to go abroad”, explains Nikki. Half of Greece’s population now live in and around Athens, where low wages and a high cost of living remind the population of the traumatic financial crisis. “With what we went through during our 20s, we want to make sure our lives are stable before starting a family”, explains citizen Klairi Sacha. There’s a risk the country won’t have enough young people to pay for pensions and healthcare for the old. Greece's families minister, Domna Michailidou, is a former economist and a mother. She led the government’s financial incentive scheme, lowering taxes for parents. She explains that the issue is not solely economic: “we need to make it cool for the youngsters to have kids”.