Greece’s birth deficit mapped in Eurostat report

The declining birth rate across the European Union was mapped in a report on EU households released on Monday, World Children’s Day, by Eurostat. One child households were most common among households with children in 26 EU countries.

In 2022, in the EU, there were nearly 200 million private households. Slightly less than a quarter of those (24.3%) included children. Around 10% of households included either one child (12.1%) or two children (9.3%), while only 3.0% of the EU’s households included three children or more.

The total number of households in the EU rose by 6.9% between 2012 and 2022. The percentage of households that included at least one child decreased by 2.4 percentage points (pp) in the same period.

For households with children, those with one child were the most common in the EU, except for the Netherlands, where households with two children had a higher percentage. Households with 3 children or more were the least common across all EU countries. 

In Greece, among the households with children, 47.4% had one child, about 37% had two children, and 15,7% of the households had three or more.