Greece’s population is falling fast, with low birth rates and economic instability hitting its island communities hardest. An unconventional new organisation, Hope Genesis, is attempting to inject life back into these remote areas and encourage people to get pregnant through a programme of financially incentivised births. Leah Green and Ekaterina Ochagavia travel to Greece to see them in action, and to examine the ethical and environmental issues behind paying women to have babies
∙This series was filmed in 2020 adhering to local coronavirus restrictions
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There is definitely an overpopulation problem but Greece is the wrong place to attribute it or brought it up. Greece has less than 10 million and is actually below average on population density (actually 81 per km2). Even if tomorrow the whole country disappears the overpopulation problem will remain almost intact. It is like going to Greenland and telling them to have no kids for sake of overpopulation and environment. Even to places that are very densely populated but with very little population like Monaco is insignificant. On the other had you have countries like Egypt that have tremendous overpopulation problem and their government acknowledges it and gives free birth control etc. But the biggest problem is China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh… those that have population density way beyond average.
It’s a bit humorous how one student wears a mask and uses hand sanitizer after class.
A lot of industries will be using robots to do the jobs needed.
Do we really need more people? Maybe give tax benefits to people that do have children. Middle class in America get no help… yet tons of programs for the poor.
Anyone know the presenters name ?
What’s not good is bringing souls to this world without knowing how to raise an emotionally healthy individual
Europeans should be having more kids like families in Asia and Africa.
It would be interesting to go to countries which are experiencing rapid population increases too like India, Nigeria, Egypt etc. These countries are going to struggle to feed themselves in the next 50 years
Offer new families an interest-free loan, and then reduce the payments by 1/4 for each child the family has from then on. Simple, effective and gets families on the right track. Works better than replacing the population with transplanted people from other parts of the world.
The issue seems overly simplified here as if having fewer people on earth somehow equates to long-term sustainability. The issue isn't really population growth if we continue with the way we are exploiting the environment. Slowing down population growth would just marginally slow down climate collapse. The issue is that governments and corporations are focusing solely on profits. On a global scale, we need to focus on sustainability and renewability, and we need to put much, much more money and man-power behind this. Governments need to be funding more environmental research and initiatives, and corporations need to adopt greener practices either willfully or by force. Among the general population, there has to be a massive shift away from mindless over-consumption.
More kids > More Consumption >> Good for Economy BUT Bad for Environment and Ecology!
00:41
Greece should teach Greta's lessons to its kids to be conservation leaders of tomorrow, not just consumers!
People don't want kids. People don't want marriage. Fewer want any relationships.
I can't get through the video, this is so creepy. People begging women to have children during a pandemic when nobody can afford to take care of themselves because wages never increase, all for the sake of the economy… people are not capital. Capitalism is insane
I also think it's strange that the anti natalist argument is presented as antithesis to these weird baby making programs. I don't think the stats support the idea that population is what is driving it. It seems more like waste from corporations due to unchecked capitalism, not shifting to clean energy, etc. We have enough food and space for everyone on the planet and we have empty houses and landfills worth of food thrown away every year in every country. I think more time should have been given to the criticism of the baby making programs being that it's nationalistic. They don't want more babies, they want more "Greek" babies, they don't want "Greek genes" to die, "Greek history" to die. It's not a criticism of Greece only, but nationalism as an ideology is incredibly harmful overall. We can't have more people not because too many people are killing the planet, but because we live in an economy that would rather throw away resources and endlessly generate pollution using fossil fuels than to feed and house everyone. I think we should name the problem here and that's capitalism.
If you don't make people work to live, if you give everyone food, shelter, and water and education and healthcare for free at a base level, then people will have what they need to live and they will have babies because as stated that's a natural human instinct. But we're not going to have babies if we don't have our basic needs met. You can't support the needs of a baby if your own needs are not met. There programs are sponsored by rich people trying to beg and press people into having babies for the sake of the economy and giving them the bare minimum of financial support in order to get the kid into the world then after that it's over and done with and they've got what they wanted and don't have to continue looking after mother and child. It's sinister and it's not in anybody's best interest but their own. We all need to wake up to that. The rich don't care about us and they just see us as human capital.
Isn't Greece one of those countries where parents are supposed to buy or build houses for their offspring or the other way round? These expensive 'traditions' should be banished.
Meanwhile greece government just bought multibillions dollars rafale fighter jets seriously
What is this woman talking about, You can have one or two kids and it won't have an extra environmental impact at all. If ever couple on the planet would have 2 kids the population would reach an equilibrium once we've reached the a maximum age. Our power consumption has decreased by 10% in the last generation (30 years), even though our technology usage has sky rocketed. I don't think her argument holds much validity.
I guess she just wants the population to decline, but you can only do that responsibly when you have an equilibrium for 3-4 generations, especially for a country like Greece that has a massive amount of pensioned elderly, being partially responsible for the 2008 economic crisis.
The lady who doesn't want people to have children keeps dogs!!
Baby bonuses don't really help. Not talking about the support in Greece as that looks like a good program. Australia had one in the early 2000s and it didn't help those who didn't want kids because of work or already were happy with one or two. It encouraged mostly lower socio economic people to cash in for an upfront $6,000 and have lot of kids they couldn't really afford or provide for so it became disastrous and was scrapped.
The answer is to strengthen the Greek economy so we don't leave the country, not have more kids to make up for the population decline. Greece is so poor there's barely a quality of life outside of villages. Plus the programme is clearly motivated by nationalism. They don't want babies, they want Greek babies. I wish you would've asked if having kids with non-Greek men was encouraged just to see what they'd say.
I love Greeks there language there culture and there land !!!!! And water !! There style of building ancient ruins there religion there just badass there military and history is amazing n the sad reality is there’s so lil of of them the government needs to give people more opportunities more assistance give people huge bonuses to Greek families!!!!!!!! I hope there population grows I will be praying for y’all !
Can that woman (who was interviewed) seriously not understand the point of making children outside of consumer culture/capitalism?