The distribution of the Greek population is extremely uneven, according to the latest official census data.
The country has approximately 10.5 million permanent residents, however most of them live in a few relatively small areas.
Obviously, this is not something new for Greece, as most people know that the capital city of Athens has a particularly large population compared to the overall population of the country. However, when we see the official data and the detailed picture, it becomes even more striking.
The two most populous regional units of the country, Thessaloniki and the Central Sector of metropolitan Athens, account for a staggering 20 per cent (⅕) of the total population.
This becomes astonishing when we take into account that this 20 per cent of the population occupies only 2.8 per cent of Greece’s land area. This means that more than two million people live in less than 4,000 square kilometres (1,500 square miles).
Furthermore, the top 10 list of the most populous regional units of the country includes six which are located in Attica. This top ten list is comprised of a total of 53 per cent of the population of the country. In other words, more than half of Greece’s residents live in just 12.8 per cent of the country’s territory.
On the other hand and in direct contrast, the ten least populated areas, which are mainly island regions, have only 0.86 per cent of the population in a total of 2.1 per cent of the area.
What it means for the Greek population
This impressive disparity in the distribution of the Greek population is even more evident when we look at the municipal picture.
Half of the population of the country lives in just 66 out of 1,036 municipal units of the nation. Most of them are located in Attica, Thessaloniki, and regional unit capitals across the country.
A staggering 80 per cent of the population –in other words, four out of every five Greeks– resides in 277 municipal units which only cover 25.2 per cent of the total land mass of Greece. This is a figure that has halved since 1951, when it was around 50 per cent.
This exceptionally uneven distribution of people in Greece creates a series of issues and problems particularly in areas such as economic development and social cohesion. This, combined with a particularly quickly ageing population puts the country in a difficult situation in terms of demographics and future prospects.
According to the preliminary data of the country-wide census of 2021, the population of permanent residents in Greece is 10,432,481. Of those, 5,357,232 are women and 5,075,249 are men.
Attica is by far the most populous region of Greece. There, the registered population was 3,792,469 people. This marks a slight decrease of 35,965 compared to the last census of 2011.
Central Macedonia in northern Greece is the second most populous region of Greece with 1,792,069 inhabitants. The population there had a more significant decline of 90,039
