It takes a village and €233,000 to raise a child in Greece

Newswire

Athens: It takes a village to raise a child, as the old African proverb goes. But what happens when you need to hire – and, of course, pay for – that village? It is currently estimated that it costs around €13,000 per year to raise a child in Greece.

In practice, a child in an average Greek family will have cost that family €233,000 by the time they turn 18. And this explains, at least in part, why Greeks are having fewer children than ever before. In 2022, 76,095 children were born in the country, which is 10.8% less than the previous year, but also the fewest since 1932, when birth records began to be kept. It is estimated that the figure will be even lower in 2023.

In Greece, it is estimated that there are currently nearly 2 million children growing up in more than 1 million households. An analysis of data from the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) shows that the monthly expenditure of an average couple in 2022 was around €1,340, while the average household with one child spent €2,385 per month.

Taking into account inflation in 2023, it is estimated that having a child will add an average of €12,941 per year to a household’s budget. Therefore, the average Greek family will have spent approximately €233,000 in today’s money by the time their child reaches adulthood. This is a rather conservative estimate of the costs, as the ELSTAT data measure the expenditure of households with children up to the age of 16, for example without taking into account the high costs of schooling that are traditionally borne by families when their children are in the last years of high school. At the European level, however, a study carried out by the German neobank N26 estimates that it takes €240,000 to cover the costs of a child between the ages of 5 and 18.

Looking at the data over time, we can see that the cost of raising a child in Greece has not changed significantly compared to 15 years ago.

However, taking into account the significant decline in income over this period, it is clear that the burden on family budgets is now considerably higher.

And yet, at this time of high prices, it is not the supermarket cost that is the main concern for families.

“The biggest expense for parents is definitely education,” says Markella Dimou, editor of parenting magazine Talcmag. “Whether it’s private education, where they have to deal with the tuition fees of a private school, or public education, where the cost of private tutoring schools [known as ‘frontistiria’] and extracurricular activities is very high. Parents are mainly stressed about when their child will grow older, because that is when the frontistiria, foreign language lessons etc start.”
It really does cost more to raise a child as they get older. In the first year of a child’s life, costs can exceed €3,000 to €4,000, as new parents have to pay for home and play equipment, frequent visits to the pediatrician, clothes, diapers and milk.

In addition, the price of baby milk in Greece is three times higher than in some other European countries, according to the Hellenic Competition Commission. The recent decision to increase the birth grant from €2,000 to €2,400 for the first child is therefore welcome, but it still does not cover all costs, even if the costs of childbirth are not taken into account.

With mothers returning to work, the family’s expenses increase significantly, especially if there are no grandmothers to take care of the children. A full-time babysitter is paid around €750-850 per month, while if the family’s needs require a part-time babysitter, it’s around €400-550 per month, or €6-7 per hour.

Even for children attending municipal nurseries and kindergartens, the cost of meals depends on the family’s income and generally ranges from €60 to €160 per month. Fees for private kindergartens average €4,000 per year. There are currently 159 private primary schools, 98 private secondary schools and 93 private high schools in Greece and, according to the most recent data available, almost 60,000 students attend these schools. Their annual tuition fees start at around €4,000 and can reach as much as €14,000 per year at the most expensive private schools, not including other costs such as books, school bus fees, uniforms, canteen meals etc.

Marina has three children – ages 7, 8 and 10 – and knows very well that she is the exception. There are few “brave” people who have three children these days, with Eurostat figures showing that there are less than 170,000 such households in the whole of Greece. Although her children attend public school, Marina says it is the private tutoring and extracurricular activities that take the biggest bite out of the family budget. She pays €150 a month for piano lessons and €75 for karate, while she pays for English lessons a year in advance to take advantage of the discount. “It’s not just the financial costs, today’s parents carry a lot of burdens on their backs,” she says, describing the daily life of the couple who have no help from grandparents and therefore have to share all the responsibilities that come with having children.

In most Greek families, however, the help of grandparents is still considered essential, as it is the norm for grandmothers to be “recruited” as soon as the mother returns to work.

But the previous generation’s contribution to raising children does not end there. “In recent years, the cost of feeding children has been an issue in the spotlight, but I don’t see families worrying much about it. I think this is because there is a lot of support from grandparents. Most families are more concerned about the cost of schooling because the grandparents cover the supermarket and the farmer’s market costs,” she explains, citing conversations she has had with Talcmag readers and in her wider social circle.

“High prices concern mothers ideologically; everyone feels like they have to talk about it. But the big expenses are different, and grandparents help a lot. What happens with grandmothers in the ‘Holy Greek Family’ does not happen in many other countries, and certainly not in Northern Europe,” she says. The truth is that when you look at the unprecedented crisis that parents on the other side of the Atlantic are facing today in trying to raise a child, you realize how far away – fortunately – the Greek reality is.

Business Insider estimates that it currently costs $25,714 per year to raise a child in the US. In fact, the relative cost has risen by 41.5 percent since 2016, and it is estimated to rise even higher this year. That’s because a severe crisis in the childcare sector is blowing family budgets out of the water. Nationally, the average cost of childcare is between $9,000 and $9,600 a year, but in 28 states, it is estimated to be as much as college tuition.

Amy Deveau of Boston will spend $21,000 this year, a third of her annual income, to send her 2-year-old daughter to daycare. If her daughter attended the University of Massachusetts, she calculated, she would pay less. “What’s crazy is that you have 18 years to plan for your child’s university education, to set aside money, to get a student loan. But when it comes to daycare, you don’t have the luxury of 18 years,” she tells Time magazine.

To make matters worse, the boomer generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) seems to have changed the way grandparents view their role in the family. Today’s American grandparents are experiencing what is known as the “three-quarter life crisis,” meaning they feel their lives are coming to an end and want to make the most of the time they have left.

As a result, this financially comfortable generation – with $78 trillion in assets – spends far more on travel and restaurants than the generation immediately before them.

Boomer grandparents don’t have time to babysit their grandchildren because they are living their lives.

Add to that the fact that the cost of babysitting young children has tripled since 1991, and you can see why many families are at a dead end, resulting in mothers making the decision to leave the workforce. The cost to the US economy in lost productivity is estimated at $57 billion a year.

“In Greece, grandmothers and grandfathers still feel very guilty. They don’t dare say they’ll go on a trip when, for example, the child’s tutoring, dance or any other activity has to be paid for,” says Dimou, explaining that the previous generation is the “cushion” that protects families from the high costs.

Artemis has a 12-year-old son and pays about €270 a month for private lessons, English tutoring and sports activities. Supermarket costs for the family are around €500 a month, and high costs are definitely an issue for her, as anyone with boys that age knows that the refrigerator empties as soon as they fill it.

Financial costs were a major factor in the couple’s decision not to have a second child, as was the fact that they had no help from their mothers because they live in the countryside, Artemis says.

In any case, the role of the grandmother in the Greek family is changing. “The boomer generation has definitely brought big changes internationally, and it has definitely affected Greece. Let’s not forget that the Greek grandmother is often a working grandmother; the average retirement age doesn’t leave much room for the grandmother to actively participate in the care of her grandchildren,” says Lela Dritsa, managing partner and co-founder of Nannuka, an online service where parents can find professionals for childcare, private lessons, home care and more. In its 10 years of operation, Nannuka counts 400,000 members and meets over 18,000 family needs per year, but, as Dritsa says, its most popular service is babysitting.

The co-founder of Nannuka, who has been closely monitoring the market for the past 10 years, recognizes that the cost of caring for young children has also increased in Greece. “There are a number of reasons that have led to this increase. First of all, through our platform we also see professionals with pedagogical degrees and specializations involved in childcare, so the cost is definitely affected in these cases. The general cost of living and the high cost of living have led care professionals to change their prices according to modern lifestyles.”

But along with costs, times are changing. “We are seeing in some cases that parents want to follow a style of education and upbringing that is less in line with the way grandmothers are used to raising children. There are conflicts about the boundaries and the relationship between grandmothers and children,” Dritsa notes. So while the Greek grandmother still retains the love of caring for and being active in the lives of her grandchildren, her role is certainly changing from decade to decade. “For example, children’s weekends or summers in the 1990s or even the 2000s were linked to visiting the grandparents and, of course, staying with them. Now we don’t see that as much. Even the Covid era turned our relationship with our grandmothers on its head. Distance and fear dominated,” she explains.