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Out of all European countries, the one with the lowest rate of childbearing outside marriage is Greece. However, it seems that the traditional attitudes towards family formation and childbearing have begun to change in Greece as well. Illegitimacy ratio has increased fourfold in less than 30 years. It is by using the vital statistics provided by the National Statistical Service of Greece that this paper answers to research questions regarding the sociodemographic profile of unwed mothers in Greece, in terms of educational level, age, and nationality. It also tries to find out what are the reasons of non‐marital childbearing in Greece and to investigate the geographical variation of this phenomenon within the country. A key finding is that the rise in the illegitimacy ratio from the 1990s onwards is largely due to the inflow of immigrants from other countries, mostly from the former Eastern Bloc. The social profile of these unwed mothers is totally different from their Greek counterparts, implying that foreign nationals who have children outside marriage do so by conviction and not because an unwanted pregnancy resulted to birth, which is mostly the case with Greek unwed mothers. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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The study is dealing with the evolution and the current patterns on marriage and family formation in Greece, as well as the related young population matters, by analyzing the demographic trends during the Post World War II, the temporary attitudes and behavior, especially of young people and the socioeconomic factors associated with these trends. To meet these tasks, secondary and survey data are employed, demographic indicators are constructed and descriptive plus non parametric statistics are used. The similarities and differences across Europe are identified as Greece is partly following the southeastern demographic pattern and attitudes towards marriage and family formation, but also the particularities even from the other Mediterranean-Southern countries. The demographic and attitudinal differences among societies are due to the different time period that each of these passed through the certain phases of social and economic transformations.

The number of male per 100 female live births (defined as the sex ratio at birth, SRB) has been shown to be consistently stable in human populations irrespective of time and geographical location. All over the globe approximately 105 boys are born for every 100 girls and any significant deviation from this 'global average' is considered to be unnatural and is attributed to sex-selective under-reporting of births, sex-selective abortion, sex-selective infanticide or other man-made factors. The present paper uses data on civil registration from 2004-2011 to investigate the sex ratio at birth in modern Greece. It was found that the SRB is extremely masculine when the parents originate from the Indian sub-continent and China. The SRB is also unnaturally high (more than 113 boys per 100 girls) in the case of legitimate births born to Greek mothers who are illiterate. These findings are strong evidence that sex-selective abortions are taking place in Greece within population groups with a certain ethnic and social profile. Other parameters, such as age of mother at birth, birth order, legal status of birth and geographical location, were also investigated and they were found to play a role in the variation of SRB, but not to the extent education and ethnic group do.