Greece has one of Europe’s lowest fertility rates, a dire demographic state driven by a decade-long economic crisis, emigration and changing attitudes among young people. As such, the country outlined measures on Thursday which hope to boost the lagging birth rate including vouchers, childcare benefits and tax breaks for new parents.
The prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has called it a national threat and a “ticking time bomb” for pensions. According to Reuters, some villages have not recorded a single birth in several years. For example, one of the country’s poorest, Ormenio in Orestiada, used to be full of children but now two-thirds of the 300 residents are over 70, the village president said.
Greece currently spends around one billion euros (nearly £844 million) a year on pro-child measures. However, it recorded its lowest ever number of births in 2022, according to ekathimerini.
The measures outlined on Thursday by the family, interior, finance and health ministers include tax relief for new parents, daycare vouchers, a rise in the minimum wage from 2025, pension increases and social contribution reductions.
However, experts have questioned the plan’s effectiveness.
“It is a given that the demographic problem … cannot simply be solved by benefits and cash incentives,” Deputy Finance Minister Thanos Petralias told journalists on Thursday.
Petralias added that fixing the problem also required improving the education and health systems, boosting incomes and creating better work-life balance conditions.
The measures are part of a broader plan aimed at reversing the downward trend, which officials told Retuters would be unveiled in May but has been pushed back to later this year. The plan includes affordable housing for young people, financial incentives for assisted reproduction including IVF and sperm or egg donation and incorporating migrants into the workforce.
“They (these measures) will have no dramatic impact on births,” said Byron Kotzamanis, a leading demography expert in Greece.
“There needs to be a different policy to tackle the problem at its core,” he said, adding this included giving young people incentives to remain in Greece and attracting back those who left.
Falling birthrates is a problem governments are facing across Europe. Countries including France, Italy, Norway and Spain have also spent billions of euros on pro-child measures, to little effect.
South Korea has the lowest birthrate in the world, which is continuing to plummet after breaking its own staggeringly low record from last year. For 2022, Statistics Korea reported a rate of 0.78 – or 78 babies for every 100 women.
The country is so desperate to boost its rate that a construction company announced in February that it is offering huge bonuses to staff if they have children, with new parents able to receive 100 million won (£59,434) per birth.
There are genuine fears that the country “will face the crisis of extinction in 20 years”, as put by the company’s chairman.
A new £78.8 billion high-speed train is also being launched, with the aim of reducing travel time between the capital and its outskirts to encourage more youth to have children amid cramped and expensive housing in greater Seoul.
Meanwhile in Japan, a dating app has been launched by the capital, Tokyo, which requires users to submit documentation proving they are legally single and sign a letter stating they are willing to get married.
“We learned that 70 percent of people who want to get married aren’t actively joining events or apps to look for a partner,” a Tokyo government official in charge of the new app told AFP. “We want to give them a gentle push to find one”.