At the conference “Demographic 2023 – Time for action” and, specifically, in the section on “Economic development and demographic policy – Insurance, the low birth rate and the aging of the population”, the Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Security, Panos Tsakloglos, spokeu.

As he said, “all developed countries and more and more developing countries face the problem of low birth rates and population aging. No country in the world, whose fertility rate has fallen below 2.1, that is, that which keeps the native population constant, has succeeded in raising it above that limit.’

In response to a question about how sustainable our country’s insurance system is, the Deputy Minister of Labor emphasized the following:

There is no doubt that insurance systems which are of a distributive nature, such as the Greek one, i.e. systems in which current pensions are paid by the contributions of current employees, have a big problem, due to the aging of the population.

However, in our country, things, for the next few years, are not expected to get worse, as the following factors are present:

– Unemployment is high, but it is falling and will continue to fall in the coming years, while almost 300,000 new jobs were created in the previous four years.

– The employment rate of women in Greece is lower than in the EU, however, it is constantly increasing.

– With insurance reforms of the previous decade, the escape routes for early retirement were closed.

– Along with the life expectancy, the healthy life expectancy also increases, with the result that more and more retirees participate in the labor market.

When asked how a system exposed to demographic risk can be protected, Mr. Tsakloglou replied: “Certainly, the exposure of the system to demographic risk must be limited, which the government did with the establishment of the Auxiliary Capitalization Insurance Fund (TEKA ), with the result that young workers are not as exposed to demographic risk as older workers”.

In fact, as he underlined, according to actuarial studies, if the existing rules are not changed (for a change in the retirement limit, the pension adjustment rule, etc.), the Greek system is sustainable.

Mr. Tsakloglou mentioned that the existing legislation links the retirement limit with life expectancy. As he noted, “there has been a law since 2011 that links the retirement limit to life expectancy at 65 years. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this expectation has not increased in recent years. Therefore, no adjustment of the retirement limit is expected in the next few years. But, undoubtedly, at some point, this too will happen.”

Concluding his presentation, the Deputy Minister of Labor added that, during the last four years, a series of measures were taken to support the family and facilitate the reconciliation of work and family life, such as, for example, the establishment of the maternity allowance, the extension in time and quantity in maternity allowances, the increase of places in daycare centers and all-day schools, but also the extension of the opening hours of the latter, the creation of the institution of “neighborhood nannies” and much more.