This year’s tax returns reveal telling signs of a demographic crisis in Greece, with 80.9% of households – that have actually filed returns – showing no children as dependents.
The result doesn’t necessarily mean that the specific adults in the specific households are childless, but that they don’t show underage dependents.
The specter of a demographic crisis in Greece among the native-born population isn’t a new development, as the phenomenon has been established over the past two to three decades, at least. The difference over the past decade is an aggravation of the crisis.
In terms of figures derived from this year’s filed tax returns – for the fiscal year 2024 – of the slightly more than 6.720 million returns registered with the tax bureau so far, 1.283 million include underage dependents. Moreover, most families now have one to two children, on average, with “only-child” families the majority – at least from the sample of families that file returns.
Single-child families, as per the returns, exceed the category that immediately follows, families with two children, by roughly 80,000. Three-child families are 8.4% of the total of filed returns.
Multi-children families (four offspring or more) officially number just 22,542.
Other results from this year’s tax returns show that nearly 720,000 families of wage-earners with underage dependents; self-employed professionals (in all categories) with underage dependents reach nearly 307,000.
Some 4.112 million individuals (single, widowed, pensioners) have reported no underage dependents on their returns. Of the 1.324 million couples showing no dependents, some 660,000 are pensioners and retirees. Of the latter, 110,000 declare dependents, possibly adult children who are not economically active.
Single taxpayers reach 4.112 million people in the country of roughly 11 million residents, and declare total incomes of approximately 40 billion euros, and with paid taxes of 4.073 billion euros – or 990 euros per taxpayer.
