Between 2009 and 2024, births in Greece fell by 42 percent, from 117,400 to 68,300. At the same time, the average age at which women have their first child has risen sharply. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, women became mothers at an average age of 26.2. Today, that figure is 32.2.
But the national numbers conceal a striking geographical divide.
In 2024, three of Crete’s four regional units, Chania, Rethymno and Heraklion, recorded fewer deaths than births. The Dodecanese and Xanthi were in the same position.
Elsewhere, the picture was dramatically different. In 17 mainland regional units, there were between 175 and 276 deaths for every 100 births.
The figures come from research by Byron Kotzamanis, emeritus professor of Demography at the University of Thessaly and director of the Institute of Demographic Research and Studies.
His findings show how profoundly Greece’s demographic landscape has changed over the past half-century.
In 1979-80, Greece recorded an average of around 148,000 births a year. By 2024-25, that figure had fallen to roughly 67,000.
The fertility rate has followed the same trajectory. In 1979-80, there were about 2,200 births per 1,000 women. By 2024-25, the figure had fallen to 1,240.
And the decline is not merely a matter of women having fewer children. Fewer women are also entering the ages when they are most likely to have children.
The number of women aged 25 to 44 has fallen by almost 480,000, or about 28 percent. The reason is largely demographic arithmetic. The generations born after 1980 were already smaller than those before them. Those smaller generations have now reached adulthood and, in turn, are producing smaller generations of their own.
The decline in births began in earnest in the late 1970s. There was a modest reversal between 2003 and 2009, driven largely by immigration, including the arrival of large numbers of foreign-born residents after 1990. But the longer-term direction was never truly reversed.
The consequences are now visible in the birth-death balance.
Between 1971 and 1980, Greece had 638,000 more births than deaths. During the following decade, the surplus fell to 276,000. In the 1990s, it fell again, to just 22,000. After 2010, the balance turned negative.
Between 2011 and 2020, Greece recorded 267,000 more deaths than births. In just the five years from 2021 to 2025, the deficit reached another 290,000.
Yet even this national picture misses one of the most interesting parts of the story.
Divided By Demography
Take two regions with exactly 100,000 inhabitants. If one has twice as many women aged 25 to 45 as the other, it can produce roughly twice as many births, assuming similar fertility patterns.
Now reverse the calculation. If one region has twice as many people aged 65 and over, it can experience roughly twice as many deaths, assuming similar mortality rates.
In other words, population size alone tells us surprisingly little.
What matters is who lives there.
This helps explain why some parts of Greece are holding up considerably better than others.
The regional units with the sharpest falls in births tend to have experienced both lower fertility among earlier generations and a faster decline in the number of women of reproductive age.
Areas where births still outnumber deaths tend to have younger populations, a less severe decline in births, and a greater ability to retain or attract younger people.
Migration matters too. Young people moving away can accelerate demographic decline. Young people arriving can slow it down. Greece’s demographic future doesn’t look uniform.
Some regions are aging rapidly and losing population. Others, particularly areas that have retained younger residents or attracted newcomers, remain comparatively young.
Crete is one of the clearest examples.
Chania, Rethymno and Heraklion were among the regional units where births still exceeded deaths in 2024. That does not mean they are immune to Greece’s demographic crisis. Births are falling there too. It means something more interesting.
The demographic crisis is not happening at the same speed everywhere.
The Next Wave
Perhaps the most unsettling part of the research is that the future decline is partly locked in.
Children born during the exceptionally low-birth years of 2010 to 2029 will eventually become adults of reproductive age. There will simply be fewer of them.
According to the research, the generations born between 2010 and 2029 are expected to be around 450,000 fewer than those born between 1990 and 2009. That means another substantial decline in births is expected between roughly 2045 and 2060, even under different assumptions about future fertility and mortality.
This is the strange thing about demographic change. It moves slowly enough to be ignored and then arrives with the force of something that has been inevitable for decades.
A birth that does not happen today does not merely reduce today’s population by one. It removes a potential parent from the population decades later. And then, eventually, it removes another potential birth.
That is why Greece’s demographic problem cannot be reduced to whether today’s couples want children. The country is already living with decisions, economic conditions, migrations, and fertility patterns that began shaping its population generations ago.