Elon Musk
tweeted about a situation that has had Greece on alert for some time: the possibility of being the first country to suffer a really serious “demographic collapse.”
"Greece is one of dozens of countries experiencing a demographic collapse due to low birth rates," the tycoon wrote in X as a quote from an article by The People's Voice TV.
But what do you mean by "demographic collapse"?
The demographic collapse in Greece
Demographic collapse is the phenomenon of depopulation linked to a sudden decrease in the number of people alive in a society or to times of crisis related to the low birth rate.
As already mentioned, the businessman's tweet cites an article from The People's Voice that states that the European country will suffer from this problem due to the sudden loss of its young population.
This must be taken with a grain of salt
.
One cannot ignore the fact that The People's Voice is a website that, according to Wikipedia, would be “
fake news
.”
There are several specialized sites, such as Maldita.es, that warn of the veracity of their news headlines, supposedly reflected in a double blue check.
In its Terms of Use, the American site states that its information may contain “inaccuracies” and that it often “covers headlines that the main media avoid.”
The article cites voices of authority, such as those of the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister of that country, while at the same time exposing a strongly anti-vaccine position by considering COVID-19 as a possible cause of the evil that Greece is suffering. .
The report notes that “sudden and unexpected death statistics skyrocketed in perfect synchronization” with the rollout of the Covid mRNA vaccine in 2021 without any evidence from the Greek Government showing that the deaths in the population have to do with that.
The outlet further states that “Greece is expected to become the first nation to suffer a 'demographic collapse' as sudden and unexpected deaths continue to rise across the country, while fertility rates have plummeted to lower levels than experts previously thought possible.”
Beyond the veracity of the note, the information that caught Musk's attention is largely true.
What the main media say about the possibility of “demographic collapse” in Greece
The first thing one finds when searching for “
population collapse
” on Google is news from Bloomberg, The Japan Times or The Economist with titles reassuring for humanity. “Don't panic” is the phrase that serves as a common denominator.
The People's Voice talks about a real problem, but one that is mainly the product of other causes.
The low birth rate, economic instability, women's unemployment and the lack of government efforts to promote fertility
make Greece suffer even more from a situation that affects almost the entire European Union.
In December 2018, the Washington Post attributed Greece's population decline to “the country's deep and prolonged crisis, which began in late 2009 and worsened in 2011 and subsequent years.”
But also, according to that medium, the problem that affects Greece in particular would have to do with a strong
emigration of young “potential parents”
.
At the time, Greece's fertility rate was about
1.35
births per woman, well below the
2.1
rate needed for a stable population. It is evident that the crisis was a key factor because the birth rate was rising until 2008.
Towards the end of 2023, the Greek government had promised a series of new measures in an effort to counter the looming demographic challenge.
Last year, Prime Minister
Kyriakos Mitsotakis
said at a conference that the 2022 figures were “
extremely worrying
.”
“Our country recorded only one birth for every two deaths. It is a negative balance that has been increasing for almost half a century. "The demographic collapse is literally becoming an existential bet for our future," said the politician.
Some of the measures the government took that have not yet worked were tax cuts for households with children, improvements in parents' wages and child benefits, better childcare options for working mothers, and initiatives of housing aimed at Greeks under 40 years of age.
On April 10, Reuters published a report titled “The lost battle against the drop in birth rates in Greece” that showed a bleak panorama.
It should be noted that the article does not mention vaccines as a possible cause of the demographic collapse.
Reuters indicates that in 2022 Greece recorded the lowest number of births in 92 years and that everything indicates that the numbers in 2023 will be similar.
The government's challenge is to “overcome the trauma of the debt crisis” and see how it can find a way around the fall in birth rates, which is, according to the Minister, a “
national threat
” and a “
bomb. ”
of time
” for pensions.