The employment rate of people aged 65 to 69, currently below 20%, could exceed 50% by 2080. More than fifteen years after the start of the sovereign debt crisis, a further rise in the retirement age revives memories of the austerity years.
These figures are not a decision that has already been made. They are based on the current institutional framework and on Eurostat demographic data, the Greek website Euro2day reports.
The accelerated aging of the population threatens the balance of the pension system, while the country is expected to lose nearly three million inhabitants by 2080.
Unlike France, where every increase in the retirement age requires a political reform, Greece already has a mechanism that automatically pushes this age back in line with life expectancy. The statutory age is thus regularly revised upward.
This mechanism has not yet led to a further increase, however. The next revision, scheduled for 2027, could change the picture.
If the projections are confirmed, Greeks would have to wait until age 68 for a full-rate pension from 2030. By 2080, the statutory age could reach 72.
The average effective retirement age, the age at which insured people actually leave work, would rise from 64.9 in 2025 to 68.6 in 2080.
An exception would remain for people with 40 years of contributions, who could continue to retire at 62. The early retirement age, set at 62 in the general scheme under certain conditions, could also rise gradually.
This outlook would place Greece among the European countries where people retire latest, alongside Denmark.
According to the same projections, the Greek population could fall from 10.4 million inhabitants in 2025 to 7.6 million in 2080, a drop of nearly 27% in a little more than half a century. The website Sofokleous reports these orders of magnitude.
At the same time, the share of people over 65 would rise from 23.9% to 34.6% of the population. The number of people of working age would fall from 4.65 million to 3.07 million.
Today, Greece has about 41 people over 65 for every 100 people aged 20 to 64. In 2080, this ratio could reach nearly 70 per 100.
Greece is one of the European countries with the lowest birth rate. At about 1.2 children per woman, the fertility rate remains far below the generational replacement level, estimated at 2.1 children.
The country is still suffering the consequences of the economic crisis of the 2010s, which pushed many young Greeks, often graduates, to seek work abroad.
From 2010, under pressure from its international creditors, Greece undertook a radical overhaul of its pension system. Pensions underwent several rounds of cuts, the conditions for early retirement were tightened, and the statutory age was raised to 67.
In a country drained of resources, with banks short of liquidity, retirees were denied access to their savings. The image of one of them traveled around the world.
According to the latest comparable Eurostat data, old-age pension spending in 2023 amounted to about 1,067 euros per month per beneficiary in Greece, compared with 1,475 euros in Germany and 1,642 euros in France. These amounts, calculated from annual spending divided by the number of beneficiaries, do not correspond to net pensions after deductions.
Despite these relatively modest pensions, the Greek system shows a particularly high replacement rate, that is, the ratio between the pension and final salaries.