More deaths from births in our country – The phenomenon will intensify

The demographic “atony” of our country characterizes, to a greater or lesser degree, the whole of the Greek area and not only some parts of it. In particular, in the last decade, out of the 325 municipalities of our country, only 56 had positive Natural Balances (more births than deaths), while in 1 in 3 this superiority as a percentage of their population in 2011 was insignificant (less than 1%) .

In contrast, of the remaining 269 municipalities with the most deaths from births, in 50 of them their Natural Balances exceed 10%, and in 139 5% of their population.

Therefore, always based on this indicator, if their Migration balances (inputs-outputs) were zero, then more than half of these “aging” municipalities (139 out of 269) would lose in just one decade 5 to 20% of their 2011 census.

These data are results research of of teachers Byron Kotzamanis and Vassilis Pappas and are listed in the latest digital issue of the series “FlashNews” created within the framework of the ELDEK funded (and implemented by the ELKE of the University of Thessaly) Program “Demographic Projects in Research and Practice in Greece”.

The two researchersin this post on “The Natural Balance at national and regional level in the decade 2011-20 and their contribution to the reduction of the population of Greece”referring to the prospects are not optimistic as they estimate that the deaths will continue to be more from the births and the next two decadeswhile the Natural Balances are not expected to change sign while remaining negative.

This is due, according to them V. Kotzamani and Β.Παππά, for two main reasons: 1) deaths, after a first decrease in the following years of the pandemic, will continue to increase due to demographic aging (ie the increase in the number and percentage of 65 years and over in the total population), and 2) births are not expected to recover, even if the younger generations stop having fewer children at an older age as the decline in women of childbearing age – which began in the mid-2000s in our country – will continue (20-49 year olds from 2.35 million in 2010, decreased to 1.95 in 2021 and will not exceed 1.7 million in 2041).

This will result, based on what is mentioned in the same post, deaths of the period 2021-40 at the national level to be about 950,000 more than births, while almost all of the Regional Units and our Municipalities will have negative Natural Balances in the next two decades. Consequently, in the absence of shocking upheavals (a new wave of mass immigration of foreigners and, secondarily, a halt to the flight of our young people), the rate of decline of our population will not be halted.

According to what Mr. Kotzamanis emphasizes in APE-MPE, aging and low fertility will inevitably lead to the further reduction of our population that has started a decade ago, while migration can not prevent it, it will only slow it down. At the same time, given that aging is irreversible (and therefore we will have an increasing number of deaths) and on the other hand the number of people coming of age to have children is getting smaller, the only thing that can be done is to take measures to keep young people in our country while giving them the opportunity to make the number of children they want but can not do, stopping in a first period the further reduction of births, and, in a second creating the conditions for their increase.

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