Colleges shut and island life is below risk as Greece reckons with low start charges

Households within the U.S. and around the globe are having fewer youngsters as folks make profoundly completely different selections about their lives. NPR’s sequence Inhabitants Shift: How Smaller Households Are Altering the World explores the causes and implications of this pattern.

The college day is simply getting began, and four-year-old Vasiliki Vourgou, somewhat woman with darkish eyes and hair pulled again in a shiny ponytail with a scorching pink scrunchie, is alone.

Most days, there are two pupils on this small classroom on the Greek island of Lemnos, with large home windows and a view of the varsity’s entrance courtyard. However one pupil is sick, so right this moment it is simply Vasiliki, going by way of the morning routine together with her instructor.

The sky is grey, however Vasiliki’s instructor says when the climate is good, she tries to get the ladies outdoors, to work together with the older youngsters, throughout their breaks.

“They wait for the kids from the primary school to get out and they join them also, so they can be more social,” the instructor, Maria Kokkinopliti, stated by way of an interpreter.

Lemnos, within the northern Aegean, is house to roughly 16,000 folks unfold throughout a number of dozen small villages. Vasiliki’s faculty, within the small village of Thanos, is one in all many in Greece that is dealing with declining pupil numbers, as youthful folks transfer away, and those that keep have fewer youngsters.

Vasiliki’s father, Stelios Vourgos, works lengthy hours as a shepherd, however he cannot think about elevating Vasiliki and her child brother anyplace else.

“Here, I fell in love with my wife; here is my job,” Vourgos stated by way of an interpreter. “For the kids, it’s a paradise to be raised on an island, because big cities are like a jungle.”

However the lifestyle right here faces rising challenges. The first faculty within the village the place his spouse grew up was shuttered a long time in the past, he stated.

He attended the identical faculty in Thanos the place Vasiliki is now a pupil, as did his father. However now he worries it is going to be shut down. With out a thriving faculty, he stated, there will not be a lot left right here.

“There’s a chain reaction after [a school closes], so people move into different places, and then just the old people are left there, and you see villages disappearing,” Vourgos stated.

Throughout many of the world, individuals are having far fewer youngsters than their dad and mom and grandparents did. Greece’s birthrate is about 1.3 births per girl — effectively beneath the two.1 degree wanted to keep up the inhabitants.

The low birthrate is particularly seen in rural communities like Thanos and on Greek islands like Lemnos, the place a whole lot of faculties are chopping applications or closing. Nationwide, Greece’s schooling ministry introduced greater than 700 faculties would shut this yr alone, or about 5% of the nation’s faculties.

“The island’s infrastructure and available services are also affected, plus limited employment opportunities,” Konstantinos Maditinos, president of the first schooling lecturers’ affiliation on Lemnos, stated. “This means young couples have little incentive to stay on the island and leave, even if they are originally from here.”

For individuals who keep, healthcare companies will be restricted. Vourgos stated he and his spouse spent hundreds of euros to journey for medical look after every of her two pregnancies.

The island’s small public hospital has no neonatal ICU companies, so many pregnant ladies make that selection, stated Dr. Olga Katira. She has been working as a pediatrician on Lemnos for greater than a decade. Katira stated she’s seen the start charge shift in her personal workplace.

“We used to have six, seven newborns per month, and now we have three,” she stated. “That is a decline that we can see.”

Whereas the issue is extra pronounced in Greece’s small cities and island communities, Katira worries about the way forward for the nation as an entire.

“We are a small country, if it continues declining it will be very, very difficult,” she stated.

As households have had fewer youngsters or left the island, the inhabitants of Lemnos has plummeted by greater than a 3rd for the reason that early Fifties, from a peak of greater than 27,000 folks to about 16,000 in the newest Census.

The mayor of Lemnos, Eleonora Georga, stated shuttered faculties across the island are probably the most apparent indicators of the decline.

Switching forwards and backwards between English and Greek, Georga stated the general inhabitants right here is getting smaller, and older.

“It’s the contemporary lifestyle of the people nowadays. They’re not choosing to create families anymore,” she stated by way of an interpreter.

In September, the Greek authorities introduced new tax incentives designed to deal with the start charge decline. Georga stated she additionally would really like the European Union to intervene.

Requested if she thinks extra immigration to Greek islands like Lemnos may be an answer, she hesitated.

“It depends on who,” she stated.

Lately, Greece has seen a sharp improve within the variety of migrants touring from japanese Europe, Africa and the Center East — as Europe has seen waves of anti-immigrant protests.

Georga stated she’d slightly see Greeks who’ve left the nation transfer again.

These worries are shared by Angelos Vlapas, the principal of one other native major faculty on Lemnos, who stated he is involved about what immigration means for Greek id.

“We’re not criticizing the people who came here to make a living,” Vlapas stated by way of an interpreter. “On the contrary, those who have remained…have become valuable members of the local community.”

“However, that doesn’t change the fact that they belong to a different nationality.”

Alexandra Tragaki, a professor of financial demography at Harokopion College of Athens, stated fashionable ladies are having fewer youngsters partly as a result of they’ve taken on duties within the office with out having conventional, home duties proportionately decreased.

“Women changed roles, but no one else did,” Tragaki stated. “Neither the society, nor men, so part of the roles that used to be covered by women were left uncovered. And when that happens, obviously it’s the size of the family that is affected…So obviously, when you have both things to do, parenting and working, what you cut down is the number of children you parent.”

Tragaki stated many younger Greeks — who grew up at a time when the nation was struggling below a catastrophic financial downturn — fear about their very own future.

“They have been brought up in consecutive crises,” Tragaki stated. “They were born in crisis. They were brought up in financial crisis, in energy crisis, in pandemic crisis. So what they have learned is that they need to expect the unexpected.”

The concept that the tradition round household life is shifting in a profound means additionally resonates with longtime residents of one other smaller island, Fourni. The island, almost 200 miles southeast of Lemnos throughout the Aegean Sea, is house to roughly a thousand folks, relying on the time of yr.

On a sunny, clear morning, a bunch of aged males sit outdoors a small native market, below the flawless blue sky.

Parthenios Flytzanis, 92, and Nikolaos Amorgianos, 86, are reminiscing concerning the previous, and thru an interpreter, say they fear concerning the nation’s future.

“In 10 years, Greece will be a country of old people,” Amorgianos stated.

Amorgianos believes youthful generations are selecting to have fewer youngsters as a result of their values have modified.

“Now the young people, they only care about the bars, about going out, and they’ve abandoned the mountains, they’ve abandoned the countryside,” he stated.

Flytzanis agreed. He believes ladies specifically have modified.

“Women back then had 5, 6, 7 children,” he stated. “And they still took care of the goats, and the garden.”

“The chickens,” Amorgianos added.

Amorgianos remembers his mom making her personal bread, however now he believes youthful folks need every thing to be handy.

“So yes, life has become easier, and people have gotten lazier,” he stated.

Girls right this moment have extra selections, however for many who select to boost youngsters on a distant island, that selection comes with its personal difficulties. 

Katerina Vrana lives on a fair smaller island neighboring Fourni, Thymaina, together with her husband and their three youngsters. By way of an interpreter, Vrana says she and her husband had been each born and raised on the island. He is a fisherman, and he or she owns a restaurant.

For her first two pregnancies, Vrana stated she paid hundreds of euros to journey off the island to see medical doctors and ship her infants. She wished one other youngster, she stated, however hesitated due to the associated fee.

Then, she came upon about HOPEgenesis, an Athens-based nonprofit that pays for medical care and transportation for pregnant ladies from small islands and villages. It is funded largely with company and philanthropic assist. By way of an interpreter, Vrana stated this system allowed her to make her “dream” of a 3rd youngster “reality.”

HOPEgenesis began by working with ladies in Fourni a decade in the past and has since expanded companies to some 500 small villages and island communities, in an effort to assist reverse the declining birthrate.

“When they felt secure, when they felt they had financial support, women started having babies again,” undertaking supervisor with HOPEgenesis Eva Papadaki stated.

However even with that monetary assist to have youngsters, elevating them on small islands is difficult. The first faculty on Thymaina is down to only two grade-school college students. There is not any faculty for Vrana’s two older youngsters, who journey to Fourni for secondary faculty by ferry.

This yr, Vrana stated her youngest son would have been the one youngster in Thymaina’s kindergarten, so she’s determined to ship him by boat to Fourni, to the kindergarten that serves all of that island’s youngsters, so he will not be alone.

Many days, Vrana and her son trip the ferry to Fourni for varsity, alongside together with his older siblings and some others. One of many secondary college students, 16-year-old Georgia Gramatikou, stated typically within the winter the climate is just too harmful for her and her twin brother to make the crossing and go to high school.

Whereas Georgia enjoys her island house, she would not assume she’ll keep right here.

“It’s very nice here, and it’s peaceful, but I don’t see myself living here in the future because there aren’t many opportunities,” she stated by way of an interpreter.

Persons are slowly leaving the island, she stated, and the retailers are closing.

Again on Fourni, Dimitris Markakis, a neighborhood enterprise proprietor and metropolis official, says household life has at all times been vital in Greece, but it surely was as soon as seen as important. Many households had been poor, he says, however they noticed having youngsters as a supply of happiness, “as the meaning of the life.”

Markakis is in his mid-40s, with two youngsters. He left the island to review overseas earlier than returning to begin his household.

He thinks the stresses of recent life are one purpose individuals are having fewer youngsters.

Nonetheless, Markakis stated, his individuals are sturdy, and he’s hopeful.

“Greek people are very hard, and they always face problems with responsibility,” he says. “I am optimistic.”

Kleitia Kokalari and NPR’s Brian Mann contributed to this story.