Dutch growth was unique in Europe for a long time
The picture of the baby boom after the Second World War is dominated by the baby boomers, who were born between 1946 and 1955 and provided overcrowded classrooms. It is less well known that many children were born in the 1960s – an average of more than three children per woman. That is twice as much as now a quarter more than in Belgium.
The Netherlands was heading for a population of 20 million in 2000, doubling that number. To turn the tide, the Muntendam Committee was set up in 1965. When they came up with a report years later, it turned out to be overtaken by time. Birth rates had fallen to two children per woman: the specter of 20 million Dutch people evaporated.
‘Muntendam’ shows that the interim population growth in the Netherlands invariably leads to political panic. Even now the Netherlands, according to the forecasts of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), the 18 million inhabitants is rapidly approaching (2024), mainly due to immigration. So in 2022 is one state commission predictive, which will issue advice next year for 2050 – when 19 to 20 million people are projected to live here.
‘Muntendam’ offers two other lessons. The first is that population growth projections are full of uncertainties and can therefore differ greatly from what actually happens. The second is that the population in the Netherlands grew much faster until well into the twentieth century than in any other country in Europe.
5 million in 1900
To start with history, the Netherlands had about five million inhabitants around 1900 – fewer than most other small countries in Europe, such as Belgium and Portugal. The Netherlands has largely surpassed all these countries and was born into a medium-sized European country. The current population of 17.8 million is 3.5 times as high as in 1900.
For well over a century, 100,000 inhabitants have been added each year. How did that happen? Freely based on a quote by the German poet Heinrich Heine: partly in the Netherlands everything happens fifty years later. The historical-demographic laws have been lagging behind here.
The explosive growth of the world’s population began in Europe around 1800. The industrial revolution brought prosperity to ever larger populations at an unprecedented rate. Fertilizers reduced agriculture so dramatically that there was enough food. Sewage, vaccines, clean drinking water and mechanism knowledge about infectious diseases reduced child mortality. The Dutch population went from two to five million inhabitants in a century, faster than the neighboring countries Germany and Belgium.
Industrialization also created many jobs that required skill; It became more profitable for parents to invest in expensive education for a small number of children and to have many children come to work on the land. This was also possible, so that the survival rate of children was so dead. Due to the urban migration, citizens were detached from the world in which God’s water had to flow unimpeded over God’s fields.
Children’s scissors
By the end of the 19th century, in countries such as Belgium, the average number of children per woman was approaching two. That’s what demographers call “replacement levels,” which include a number that keeps the population the same size over the long run. The European population did grow in the 20th century, but mainly people lived longer through better health care and medicines.
The Netherlands remained rich in children: around 1900, families still had an average of four children. basis exist various explanations. One explanation is that the Netherlands industrialized late and to a limited extent and remained an agricultural nation for a long time. Another lies in the competition between Catholics and (Orthodox) Protestants, who expanded ‘their herds’ with large numbers of children.
That came to an end when the baby boomers in the the sixties unleashed a cultural revolution and the birth rate plummeted to two children per woman in a few years. From 1970 onwards, the Netherlands started to keep pace with other Western European countries. The birth rate gradually fell further, to just under 1.5: around the European average.
The Netherlands remained rich in children: around 1900, families still had an average of four children
Nevertheless, the Dutch population continued to grow for a long time. The peak generations had children of their own and caused baby booms, for example around the turn of the millennium. Starting with people living longer and the population began to age. Gradually, immigration, which had begun in the late 1960s with the arrival of the first ‘guest workers’, began to contribute more to population growth.
Historical contraction
Meanwhile, immigration is still the only source of population growth in the Netherlands. More precisely: the migration balance, or the number of people who come to the Netherlands, decreases with the number who leave the Netherlands. The ‘natural increase’ – the number of people born minus the number who die – has turned into a natural decline. Without the migrants, the Dutch population would be as of 2015, for the first time since 1800.
Labor migrants and – to a lesser extent – asylum seekers have therefore only recently played their role in population growth. Historically, it also plays a small role. Of the 12.5 million people with whom the population was polluted between 1900 and 2021, 11 million come from natural growth and 1.5 million from migration. The big question is insofar as that figure will increase in the first few years.
Demographers can reasonably accept their models of the natural growth of population decline – barring a black swan like ‘Muntendam’. Migration is much more erratic. Wars in and on the fringes of Europe, such as in the former Yugoslavia, Syria and this year Ukraine, are causing temporary peaks in the number of asylum seekers – an unknown number of whom are returning. During an economic boom, Dutch companies receive from foreign labor migrants, who leave so much again in a recession. The population forecast is limited to more uncertainties than before.
This uncertainty is also reflected in increasingly powerful statements, with which Minister Hugo de Jonge (Housing, CDA) has limited immigration in recent months. Over the past seven years, De Jonge has had to build just under a million homes to solve the current housing shortage. “If the migration balance remains as it is, 900,000 homes in 2030 will not be enough. Then we will build against the rocks.” said hihi recently in newspaper fidelity.
With more people, more homes are needed, as well as numerous other facilities, such as education, healthcare and public transport. This is a major challenge for a country in a river delta, which must also be prepared for the climate transition – from the construction of wind farms to the establishment of water buffers.
Reducing the number of additional immigrants, estimated at 50,000 to 100,000 per year, would help Zolang only to a limited extent. The aging wave in the Netherlands has got off to a good start with the retirement of the baby boomers; in recent decades, millions of elderly people will need adapted homes in addition to care. Since 1900, the number of people in a household has more than halved; and therefore the demand for housing has doubled.
The political discussion seems to be overtaken by demographic history.
That history also shows that the regional differences in Dutch population growth are very old: South Holland has had the most inhabitants since 1800, while Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe have the fewest. While cities in the Randstad are bursting at the seams, the regions along the eastern border are already discussing population decline. There are too few – young – people to keep schools, bus lines and shopping centers in operation.
Young Africa
Everywhere in Europe busy metropolises alternate with quiet villages, but there are differences between countries. In Spain, Portugal and especially Italy, women have the fewest children, due to poor childcare and less involved fathers. In Scandinavia, women have the most children, thanks to good facilities and caring fathers. Dutch and Belgian women are in between.
From a global perspective, the whole of Europe is a shrinking region, if fewer children are born than necessary to maintain the population in the long term. The population is still growing somewhat, but an increasingly large proportion consists of the elderly. There are fewer young people to worry about and to keep the economy going. In the Netherlands, the staff shortage is already visible in many places.
The big leap comes in Africa, from 1.5 to 4 billion inhabitants. The demographic transition is still in full swing
Europe will reach about one billion inhabitants in the 21st century, the United Nations has previously calculated. That is about the same as on the American continent. After more than fifty years, Asia has more or less completed its demographic transition – industrialization, rising life expectancy, falling numbers of children – and is expected to grow from 4 to 5 billion.
The big leap comes in Africa, from 1.5 to 4 billion inhabitants. The demographic transition is still in full swing. In southern Africa, the number of children is close to two per woman, in countries such as Nigeria and Tanzania it is more likely to be six. The latter may be related to the disadvantage of women, who often do not yet go to secondary school and have little say in their pregnancies.
More developed Africans
Africa is and will therefore become the continent of young, increasingly well-educated people. They will largely go to work in their own fast-growing economy, but also share outside Africa. For example, Nigerians are already emigrating to China, which is also facing a growing labor shortage. It is possible to start with a massive migratory flow from Africa to East Asia.
European countries like the Netherlands are at a crossroads. They can choose to take labor from such migration flows; now the Netherlands receives relatively few migrants from Africa. They can also follow the example of Japan, which has an ‘Italian’ birth rate, probably no guesses – and is growing a little bit.
In the Japan scenario, politicians sometimes try to boost birth rates with extra child benefits, for example. Countries like France, where the family name enjoy numerous benefits, only learn that such encouragements occur at most 0.1 extra species per woman. Whether politicians want more from fewer births, the demographic laws can’t move them.