Demographics of Greece: Difference between revisions

Demographics of the Hellenic Republic
Population	10,482,487 (census 2021) [1]
Growth rate	-1.01 people/1,000 population (2010 est.)
Birth rate	7.9 births/1,000 population (2020 est.)
Death rate	12.3 deaths/1,000 population (July 2020 est.)
Life expectancy	82.2 years
• male	79.8 years
• female	84.7 years
Fertility rate	1.35 children born/woman (2018)[2]
Infant mortality rate	3.75 deaths per 1,000 live births (2019 est)
0–14 years	14.1%
15–64 years	63.3%
65 and over	22.6%
At birth	1.06 male(s)/female (2008 est.)
Under 15	1.06 male(s)/female
15–64 years	1.00 male(s)/female
65 and over	0.78 male(s)/female
Nationality	noun: Greek(s) adjective: Greek
Major ethnic	Greeks

The Demographics of Greece refer to the demography of the population that inhabits the Greek peninsula. The population of Greece was estimated by the United Nations to be 10,445,365 in 2021 (including displaced refugees).

Historical overview[edit]

Greece was inhabited as early as the Paleolithic period. Prior to the 2nd millennium BC, the Greek peninsula was inhabited by various pre-Hellenic peoples, the most notable of which were the Pelasgians. The Greek language ultimately dominated the peninsula and Greece’s mosaic of small city-states became culturally similar. The population estimates on the Greeks during the 4th century BC, is approximately 3.5 million on the Greek peninsula and 4 to 6.5 million in the rest of the entire Mediterranean Basin,^[3] including all colonies such as those in Magna Graecia, Asia Minor and the shores of the Black Sea.

During the history of the Byzantine Empire, the Greek peninsula was occasionally invaded by the foreign peoples like Goths, Avars, Slavs, Normans, Franks and other Romance-speaking peoples who had betrayed the Crusades. The only group, however, that planned to establish permanent settlements in the region were the Slavs. They settled in isolated valleys of the Peloponnese and Thessaly, establishing segregated communities that were referred by the Byzantines as Sclaveni. Traces of Slavic culture in Greece are very rare and by the 9th century, the Sclaveni in Greece were largely assimilated. However, some Slavic communities managed to survive in rural Macedonia. At the same time a large Sephardi Jewish emigrant community from the Iberian peninsula established itself in Thessaloniki, while there were population movements of Arvanites and “Vlachs” (Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians), who established communities in several parts of the Greek peninsula. The Byzantine Empire ultimately fell to Ottoman Turks in the 15th century and as a result Ottoman colonies were established in the Balkans, notably in Macedonia, the Peloponnese and Crete. Many Greeks either fled to other European nations or to geographically isolated areas (i.e. mountains and heavily forested territories) to escape foreign rule. For those reasons, the population decreased in the plains, while increasing on the mountains. The population transfers with Bulgaria and Turkey that took place in the early 20th century, added in total some two million Greeks to the demography of the Greek Kingdom.

During the next decades, the population of Greece continued to increase, except during a large part of 1940s due to World War II and subsequent events. After 1940s the population of Greece continued to grow, though on a decreased pace after 1960s, due to a gradual decrease in fertility and emigration to various countries, such as West Germany, Australia, United Kingdom and many others. The birth rate decreased significantly in 1980s, while in 1987 the Greek population surpassed 10 million. At this time Greece had started to appear a positive migration rate, due to the return of Greek Civil War refugees and international immigration. During the nineties the population increased by close a million, as the collapse of the communist governments in Eastern Europe and the economic downturn resulted in a significant influx of Eastern European immigrants in Greece and especially from the Balkans, including many Greeks living in these countries. In 2000s the population continued to increase reaching 11 million, thanks to an increased birth rate, a stable influx of migrants from other countries and the return of Greeks from United States, Germany, Australia and other countries. In the 2010s, in the wake of the Greek financial crisis, the population started to decrease and birthrates plummeted, while death rates increased due to an aging population. Many Greeks emigrated abroad, while more recently the population decrease has been largely stabilized due to foreign immigration.

Population[edit]

^[4]

According to the 2001 census the population of Greece was…