Having a child will entitle you to a slightly higher allowance in Greece.
The government, faced with an aging population in the country, announced this Monday the increase in April of the birth bonus, going from 2,000 euros to 2,400 euros for the first child.
The allowance will increase depending on the number of children: for the second, it will amount to 2,700 euros and for the third to 3,000 euros, specifies the Minister for Social Cohesion and Family, Sofia Zacharakis.
The Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, assures that “support for families with children is one of our major priorities” while the Ministry of the Economy has planned a total of seven measures for which it has budgeted an envelope of 90 million euros .
Fertility rate of 1.3 children per woman
In order to encourage families to have children and stem the aging of the population, the government has already put in place since 2020 a bonus of 2,000 euros paid for each birth.
Also read: Declining birth rate: will France become the country of the only child?
During the economic crisis that affected the country between 2010 and 2018, the fertility rate decreased, from 1.5 children per woman in 2012 to 1.3 in 2019 when it should rise to 2.1 children per woman to ensure generational renewal.
According to a census carried out in 2022 by the Greek statistics authority (Elstat), the population residing in Greece has decreased by 3.5% since 2011. Around 450,000 Greeks aged under 40 have gone abroad in order to find work during the financial crisis which was accompanied by the explosion of youth unemployment.
The exodus of this generation of childbearing age therefore also contributed to the decline in the Greek population.