{"id":4983,"date":"2025-09-07T04:16:28","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T04:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/4983\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T04:16:28","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T04:16:28","slug":"incentives-fail-to-halt-demographic-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/4983\/","title":{"rendered":"Incentives fail to halt demographic decline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"960\" height=\"600\" class=\"picture-main-block-image\" data-nxsrc=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/intime-kids-bicycles-mobility-city_life-promenade-waterfront.jpg\" alt=\"Incentives fail to halt demographic decline\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/intime-kids-bicycles-mobility-city_life-promenade-waterfront.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>[InTime News]<\/p>\n<p>Greece\u2019s demographic crisis remains a political flashpoint as the government prepares to unveil new family benefits at the Thessaloniki International Fair. The measures, aimed at encouraging childbirth, build on existing subsidies: a birth grant now at \u20ac2,400 for a first child and rising to \u20ac3,500 for the fourth, plus monthly allowances up to \u20ac140 per child based on income.<\/p>\n<p>Yet high childbirth costs, dominated by widespread cesarean sections, undermine incentives. Cesareans account for 50-65% of births in Greece, well above Europe\u2019s 25.7% average, with prices climbing to \u20ac6,200 in private clinics. In vitro fertilization adds further strain, costing around \u20ac7,200 per cycle.<\/p>\n<p>Experts say social and medical factors deter families more than finances. \u201cCesarean is surgery; a woman often waits two years to try again,\u201d said a midwife. Evangelia Dimopoulou, head of the Evdokia Association, urged more midwives and maternity support. \u201cIt\u2019s not about subsidies,\u201d she said. \u201cMotherhood must regain its meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[InTime News] Greece\u2019s demographic crisis remains a political flashpoint as the government prepares to unveil new family benefits&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,5858,113,61,3766,60,1650,3767],"class_list":["post-4983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-demographics","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-in-depth","tag-ireland","tag-politics","tag-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}