The demographic profile of Greece today differs substantially from that of the first post-war decades. As a result, the “demographic issue” has emerged as one of the key challenges requiring immediate attention—both to adapt to expected changes and to mitigate the ongoing trends and their potentially adverse consequences.
While demographic developments at the national level are well known, and existing short- and medium-term projections allow us, despite some uncertainty, to outlinhe range of possible outcomes, public debate in Greece remains focused primarily on national trends. Yet, divergences in the demographic trajectories of different subnational areas have long been evident.
Moreover, when these differences are discussed, the focus tends to remain on the 13 administrative regions, even though demographic indicators often vary considerably across smaller territorial units—namely, Regional Units (RUs), Municipalities, and Municipal Units. In many cases, these local figures diverge significantly not only from regional averages but also from national ones.
Rationale for Regional-Level Projections
Given the above, it would be highly desirable for population projections not to be limited to the national level but to be complemented by corresponding exercises at lower spatial scales, such as those of the Regional Units. However, conducting such an ambitious and analytically rich exercise for all 73 Regional Units of Greece—even excluding the 10 sparsely populated ones (with fewer than 15,000 inhabitants)—would require resources and time beyond what is currently available to the Institute for Demographic Research and Studies (IDR).
Consequently, the present work focuses on three selected Regional Units, following the merging of some smaller units into larger ones (e.g., Dodecanese and Cyclades). The selection of these three—Serres, Cyclades, and Larisa—was based on a classification of all RUs into three broad groups according to a limited set of demographic and socio-economic criteria. Two of these groups represent opposite ends of the demographic spectrum. The chosen units from these groups—Serres and Cyclades—can thus be considered broadly “representative” of their respective categories, while also exhibiting strong contrasts not only demographically but also in socio-economic and geographic characteristics. The third group includes the majority of Regional Units. The selected case, Larisa, is not necessarily “representative” of this group but does not significantly deviate from its average demographic characteristics, while differing considerably from the other two cases in several secondary respects.
Methodological Framework
Population projections for the three selected areas—like those produced for the country as a whole—were conducted using the cohort-component method. The starting point is set at 1 January 2023, with a thirty-year projection horizon ending on 1 January 2053. Projections are generated in five-year steps, with results reported for 1 January 2028, 2033, 2038, …, and 2053.
Fertility and mortality trends differ among the three regions—sometimes substantially. For mortality, separate life tables were used for each Regional Unit: those of South Aegean (for Cyclades), Thessaly (for Larisa), and Northern Greece (for Serres), as provided by Eurostat (2023).
Four projection scenarios were developed for each region:
• S1: Constant fertility
• S2: Low fertility
• S3: High fertility
• S4: Intermediate fertility
Mortality was assumed to evolve identically across all scenarios within each region. The decision to apply a single mortality scenario per region reflects the fact that, given the existing age structures, variations in mortality would have negligible effects on the projected total populations, age distributions, and natural balances over the coming decades. Consequently, doubling the scenarios (from four to eight) by introducing additional “high” and “low” mortality variants would have contributed little analytical value.