The population of our planet is growing and will continue to grow, reaching about 10 billion before the end of the 21st century according to the intermediate scenario of United Nations projections. However, the population of Europe, based on the same scenario, not only will not increase, but on the contrary will decrease in the coming decades, with the result that while in 1950 it constituted 22% of the world population and 9.5% today it will be reduced to 7, 3% in 2050, while the population of Greece will also decrease (probably by 1.3 million, i.e. by 12% compared to today).

The above refers to the last issue (45o) of the “Demographic News” series on “The population of Greece in the horizon of 2050”, a digital bulletin of the Laboratory of Demographic and Social Analyzes of the Univ. Thessaly, in which the authors (prof. Byron Kotzamanis and post-doctorate Georgios Kontogiannis), present the prospects for the population of Greece based on the recent (2022) projections scenarios of the United Nations.

Specifically, as they report, the population of Greece will continue to decrease until 2050, while the only age group that will increase is that of 65 years and older (+800 thousand people compared to today, from 2.4 to 3, 15 million in 2050). Conversely, both 0-19-year-olds and the working-age population will shrink, with the result that 20-64-year-olds (6.03 million in 2022) will be less than 4.5 million in 2050. Due to aging, and despite the fact that life expectancy will increase, deaths are not expected to decrease, fluctuating in all scenarios around 125-130 thousand per year by 2050, being far more than births. In particular, even if the intensity of fertility increases (that is, if younger couples have more children than their parents), births in the “intermediate” scenario will fluctuate annually around 75 thousand (much less than the 89 thousand on average that we had in the decade 2012-2021) and in the “high” – scenario very unlikely – around 98 thousand (slightly more). The natural balances therefore (the scale ie births – deaths), they find, will be negative for all the next years up to 2050 – although differentiated by scenario.

This will inevitably lead to the reduction of the population, as the small positive projected immigration balance in all the United Nations projection scenarios for Greece (+140 thousand for the period 2022-2049) is impossible to compensate for the extremely negative balance of births – deaths. The expected fewer births in the next few decades compared to those of the period 2012-2021 are due, according to the researchers, to two main factors:

j) in reducing the population of women of child bearing age and

ii) the low fertility of young couples, i.e. the limited number of children they bring into the world (1.55 children/woman on average). The “restoration” of fertility in the next decades, with the creation of a particularly favorable environment, if and as long as it is achieved, will lead much later – and certainly not before 2050 -, on the one hand, to stopping the decrease in the number of women 25-44 years, on the one hand, to the stabilization of births around 100 thousand (and by extension to a relatively more balanced physical balance). Therefore, policies aimed at this goal are not expected to have effects in the short-medium term, but in the medium-long term. By extension, any negative effects in the near future of the demographic developments of the previous decades can be partially mitigated if, in addition to increasing fertility, the migration of our young people is stopped soon and the entry-exit balance becomes strongly positive (very more positive than that adopted by the UN projections). Speaking to the Athenian-Macedonian News Agency, Mr. Kotzamanis emphasizes that “just as demographic projections are generalization exercises with relatively small margins of uncertainty when we refer to the short and medium term (see 2050-), we can now delineate the fields of the possible and Those responsible for planning and decision-making at the national and regional level must therefore take for granted some irreversible demographic trends in the coming decades, assess their effects and take appropriate measures now for the inter- their long-term reversal. Therefore, adaptation to the expected “demographic” changes and active actions should replace passivity and wait-and-see attitudes.”