ABSTRACT
The demographic history of modern Greece over the past 125 years can be divided into three periods:
A period of mounting population pressure and limited resources between 1860 and 1912 resulting in a mass migration of youth to the United States and thus an early maturity of the country around the turn of this century.
A brief period of rapid territorial expansion and parallel population changes as a result of a long war, which started successfully in 1912 only to result ten years later in a national catastrophe without precedent in Greece’s 3,000 years’ history. About one and one-half million refugees forcibly evicted from Asia Minor were re-settled within a few months in a country whose population barely exceeded 4.5 million. As a consequence, a relative demographic rejuvenation resulted, but since poverty and political instability persisted emigration continued unabated until shortly before World War II.
A post-War period of progressive demographic maturity followed by an explosive demographic ageing related to large scale emigration to Western Europe, Canada, and Australia and simultaneous internal migration to metropolitan areas. The internal migrants raised small families of one or two children, resulting in an arrested population growth. Presently Greece occupies a prominent position, as one of the less industrialised and the fastest ageing countries in the developed world.
