Sunk in recession for the past six years and struggling to steer its economy through painful austerity cuts, Greece now faces a fertility crisis as well.
“Benefits have been cut, the cost of living has risen, wages are down and there is great uncertainty,” says Leonidas Papadopoulos, managing director of the Leto hospital and a veteran obstetrician.
“Couples think twice nowadays, not only about a second child but even about their first. It looks like there will be 10,000 fewer births next year,” he adds, citing estimates drawn from state and private studies.
According to state statistics agency Elstat, the fertility rate in Greece has fallen from 2.33 children per woman in 1975 to 1.4 in 2011.
The replacement rate, the number of births at which the population remains stable, is 2.07 children.
Papadopoulos also cites a recent study by the University of Athens which found that the rate of miscarriages has doubled to four percent in the last two years.
And births have gone from 118,000 in 2008 to 101,000 last year, he notes.
“At this rate, Greece will be much smaller in a few years,” Papadopoulos says.
The European Union fertility leader is Ireland with 2.05 births in 2012, followed by France with 2.01 children.
In one of its projected scenarios, Elstat sees the population of Greece dropping to 9.7 million in 2050 from 11.29 million in 2012.
A jobless rate of over 27 per cent – and over 30 per cent among women – compounds the difficulty facing couples today.
“Policies to protect maternity are easier to apply in good (economic) periods,” says a high-ranking state welfare official who declined to be named.
“In the private sector, mothers very frequently do not make use of their rights because unemployment is very high,” the official added.
In Greece, even for couples who are not in dire straits, supporting a large family is tough.
“We cannot meet the needs of our three children and our parents are having to contribute from their pensions,” says Georgia Kitsaki, an unemployed hotel worker from Thessaloniki.
Georgia and her husband Nikos, who is also unemployed after a labour accident, received a monthly jobless benefit of 470 euros until December, and child benefit of 276 euros. The latter has since been suspended.
“In any case, this money is so little that it cannot even cover bread and milk for the children,” she adds.
Source: AFP.