ATHENS – Already wracked by a 9 1/2-year-long economic and austerity crisis that saw the economy shrink 25 percent, and scores of thousands of people – especially jobless young – fleeing to other countries, Greece will be made up mostly of the old and retired by 2050.

That scary prospect was raised by Hellenic Association of Geriatrics and Gerontology (HAGG) ahead of the International Day for Older Persons on Oct. 1 which said teens will make up only 12 percent of the population by then, the average age will be 50, said Kathimerini in a report.

In even more dire news, there will be only about 3.7 million workers, little more than a third of the population now, who will be bearing the burden of paying into a sagging social security system that's already underfunded.

HAGG warned about the impact of Greece’s low birth rate and negative net migration rate while urging authorities to take measures to encourage healthy and active aging without saying what those could be.

The new New Democracy government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said it will give a bonus of 2,000 euros ($2,184) for each child born in a plan aimed at encouraging people to have more babies after the crisis saw the rate plunge even more with people worried about the ability to pay for raising children.

In 2016, the birth rate was 8.5 per 1,000 people or about 1.3 per household. The death rate was 11.2 per 1,000 people.

Some 20 percent of Greek women born in the 1970s are likely to remain childless, a level not seen since WWII, the Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital, based in Vienna found in 2017.

Data showed then that Greece and Italy had the joint third-lowest birth rate in Europe (9/1,000) after Germany (8.4/1,000) and Portugal (8.5/1,000). Greece’s total fertility rate had dipped to 1.26, when, in order to maintain the population, the country needs a birth rate of 2.1.

Even according to the most optimistic predictions, it is estimated that Greece’s population will be under 10 million by 2050; skeptics put the country’s population at 8.3 million by that date.

Furthermore, it is estimated that Greece will have 1-1.4 million children aged 3-17 in 2050, down from 1.6 million today. Over-65s are seen making up a third of the overall population, from 20.7 percent as of today.