>> Greece: Demographics

Young Greeks are now fewer than their elders.

According to the 2001 census, Greece had a population of 10,964,020. Of those, 58.8% lived in urban areas, whereas only 28.4% lived in rural areas. The population of the two largest cities in Greece, Athens and Thessaloniki, almost reached 4 million. Although the population of Greece continues to grow, Greece faces a serious demographic problem: 2002 was the first year where the number of deaths surpassed the number of births.

A large number of immigrants live in Greece today, estimated at over one million. About 65% have come from Albania, and large-scale Albanian migration to Greece since the fall of Communism in Albania has become a source of conflict in Greece because the Greek-Albanian borders opened without any preparations from the Greek government in terms of immigrant facilities. The Albanians occasionally suffer from discrimination and exploitation in Greece, and formerly had a reputation as trouble-makers and criminals. Nonetheless most Greeks nowadays recognize their contribution to the Greek economy. (Several prominent Greek sportsmen are ethinc Greeks who immigrated to Greece from Albania or Georgia in the 1990s.) There are smaller numbers of immigrants from Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Pakistan, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Egypt, Palestine, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, China and Georgia. The exact number is not known, since the majority live illegally in Greece.

Greece has various, if not numerous, linguistic and cultural minorities. They include, but are not limited to, various Roma groups, Turkish speakers, Slavs, and Vlachs, (Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians). Religious minorities are numerous with the largest being Muslims.

The only minority to which special rights are granted (deriving mainly from the Treaty of Lausanne) is the Muslim (mainly Turkish) minority of Thrace.