We missed the first world war. You see a population dip for many other countries around that time.
Also; immigration
Historical demographics is a complex field, it’s likely a combination of causes. One being religion: in neighboring countries the fertility rate started dropping earlier than in NL, mostly in the more religious regions it stayed high. Authors who have published about this are Jan Kok, Theo Engelen and others. You can also start with Knippenberg & de Pater.
after world war two we started making a lot of babies and we pay people form other countrys to work in the netherlands so our economy can grow. and now we are one of the dencest populaited countrys in the world
We celebrated our liberation from Nazi Germany by having a giant year long orgy. It was beautiful, filled with love, but also consequences.
Several reasons.
Not being part of WWI for starters
The country was a poor rural country where big families were essential for continuing the farm, so it was normal to have up to 10 kids until the 60s
I’d say the prevalence of food before and after ww2 would be a big factor, also the increase of living space due to the polders.
Netherlands number 1. No china. No USA. Netherlands number 1!
Multiple factors: Not participating in WW1, huge babyboom post WW2, immigration from former colonies. Which included Dutch people who lived there and natives/mixed.
Great big bitterballen
The last year’s is the immigration
Several people have mentioned us being neutral in ww1 playing a role, which is true.
But staying out of ww1 also meant that we didnt get hit THAT hard by the Spanish flu.
That disease killed about as many as ww1 did.
Historically and currently the Netherlands has the most immigration per Capita
Cause our country is awesome…
Skipped ww1
Immigrants from former colonies
After ww2 baby boom many families with 8 kids
but isn’t this a bit selective why is there no France or uk or other countries with more population?
Well I live this country and moved to live there. I know ~500 same people. With families. I guess this is the answer
Because once you go Dutch, you keep put and never move out!
Quality of life thing, that should change in coming years, unless hell freezes over and a politician will fulfill a ‘promise’.
This is just a guess, but looking at the graph I notice that it turns to a steep curve around 1870. That’s earlier than most explanations.
My take would be: The Netherlands was quite late and relatively poor going through the industrial revolution, including the mechanization of farmland. When that finally got going, a lot of Dutch land proved very fertile, and easy to work because of how flat and wet it is. Food became cheap and abundant, and this multiplied when artificial fertilizer became common in the 1920s. In essence, the country was underutilized. And it was part of the culture to have a lot of children until the 1960s. (In fact, the church would come to your house and inquire why it’s been a while since your last kid)
It also coincides with the norm becoming sending children to school (Child labor was made illegal in 1874)
Apart from 1944, the Netherlands never had major population loss to war or famine. The long term government has also been relatively stable.
Starting around 1960, the Netherlands has been a immigration nation, with a remarkably steady 0.5% per year, even though the origin countries change a lot. That compounds and ads up. Without net. immigration NL would’ve started shrinking around the year 2000, and would now be around 14m people instead of nearly 18m.
Most of these answers name WW1, the Spanish flu, WW2 and decolonisation. These are likely influential, but if you look at the graph you’ll see that the Netherlands already had the fastest growing population around 1900 which persists. So it seems to be a more deep-rooted socio-economic cause than these singular events.
It seems you were not bothered by any war. Weird.
I’m having doubts to the accuracy of this chart, as if WWII didn’t happen.
Nederland was na WOII nog steeds verzuild en conservatief; bij vrouwen werd na het trouwen / na een bepaalde leeftijd het dienstverband automatisch ontbonden en bleven ze huisvrouw. Dat maakt het ook makkelijker om veel meer kinderen te hebben, dit bleef ongeveer tot de jaren 70, toen de vrouw emancipeerde. De immigratie nam enorm toe van ex de koloniën, gastarbeiders en vluchtelingen.
Catholics and Calvinists
My grandma and grandpa had 8 siblings each. They themself had 5 kids and the only reason they hadn’t more was the health of my grandma. If you where a young couple and you did not produce kids, the pastor came asking what was wrong. There was a huge social presure to create a big family.
My mom has like 100 cousins.
Nitchen in the kitchen
In the period 1945-1968, a large-scale repatriation of Indo-Dutch people took place; more than 300,000 Indisch Dutch came to the Netherlands from the former Dutch East Indies. Also, from 1954, the inhabitants of the Surinamese part of the Kingdom became Dutch citizens, allowing them to travel freely to the Dutch part of the Kingdom
massive german immigration after Prussian (and especially WW1) wars.
Prussian invasion was an invasion and it was considered as such in much of the North West Germany and “the unification” happened much later with the death of Bismark.
We’re just more attractive
Everybody wanna be here
Immigration. Strange that other big immigrant countries (France, UK) that had colonies aren’t included.
The Netherlands is also the biggest economy of the other countries mentioned in the graph, which is a huge factor for immigration aside from colonies getting independant. Again, weirdly enough the countries with bigger economies then NL aren’t included
Not sure if it’s the thing but all my Dutch friends have at least 2 siblings.
This is not a case neither in my country nor anywhere else in Europe I’ve been to
We came to eat cheese and fuck bitches and we are all out… wait, no. We are not out of cheese?
Sorry no clue mate.
Never knew NL had less population than Belgium during the Belgian independence war around the 1830s.
That’s pretty interesting.
A factor that also is contributing is the rise of personal hygiene and vaccinations. Until the late 1800’s epidemics such as cholera, measles, typhoid and smallpox were very common. This is of course the same for other european countries, but already in the 1800’s the Netherlands was a country with a relatively large percentage of the population lived in high density cities. Infectious diseases could therefore spread relatively quick under a large part of the population.
32 comments
We missed the first world war. You see a population dip for many other countries around that time.
Also; immigration
Historical demographics is a complex field, it’s likely a combination of causes. One being religion: in neighboring countries the fertility rate started dropping earlier than in NL, mostly in the more religious regions it stayed high. Authors who have published about this are Jan Kok, Theo Engelen and others. You can also start with Knippenberg & de Pater.
after world war two we started making a lot of babies and we pay people form other countrys to work in the netherlands so our economy can grow. and now we are one of the dencest populaited countrys in the world
We celebrated our liberation from Nazi Germany by having a giant year long orgy. It was beautiful, filled with love, but also consequences.
Several reasons.
Not being part of WWI for starters
The country was a poor rural country where big families were essential for continuing the farm, so it was normal to have up to 10 kids until the 60s
I’d say the prevalence of food before and after ww2 would be a big factor, also the increase of living space due to the polders.
Netherlands number 1. No china. No USA. Netherlands number 1!
Multiple factors: Not participating in WW1, huge babyboom post WW2, immigration from former colonies. Which included Dutch people who lived there and natives/mixed.
Great big bitterballen
The last year’s is the immigration
Several people have mentioned us being neutral in ww1 playing a role, which is true.
But staying out of ww1 also meant that we didnt get hit THAT hard by the Spanish flu.
That disease killed about as many as ww1 did.
Historically and currently the Netherlands has the most immigration per Capita
Cause our country is awesome…
Skipped ww1
Immigrants from former colonies
After ww2 baby boom many families with 8 kids
but isn’t this a bit selective why is there no France or uk or other countries with more population?
Well I live this country and moved to live there. I know ~500 same people. With families. I guess this is the answer
Because once you go Dutch, you keep put and never move out!
Quality of life thing, that should change in coming years, unless hell freezes over and a politician will fulfill a ‘promise’.
This is just a guess, but looking at the graph I notice that it turns to a steep curve around 1870. That’s earlier than most explanations.
My take would be: The Netherlands was quite late and relatively poor going through the industrial revolution, including the mechanization of farmland. When that finally got going, a lot of Dutch land proved very fertile, and easy to work because of how flat and wet it is. Food became cheap and abundant, and this multiplied when artificial fertilizer became common in the 1920s. In essence, the country was underutilized. And it was part of the culture to have a lot of children until the 1960s. (In fact, the church would come to your house and inquire why it’s been a while since your last kid)
It also coincides with the norm becoming sending children to school (Child labor was made illegal in 1874)
Apart from 1944, the Netherlands never had major population loss to war or famine. The long term government has also been relatively stable.
Starting around 1960, the Netherlands has been a immigration nation, with a remarkably steady 0.5% per year, even though the origin countries change a lot. That compounds and ads up. Without net. immigration NL would’ve started shrinking around the year 2000, and would now be around 14m people instead of nearly 18m.
Most of these answers name WW1, the Spanish flu, WW2 and decolonisation. These are likely influential, but if you look at the graph you’ll see that the Netherlands already had the fastest growing population around 1900 which persists. So it seems to be a more deep-rooted socio-economic cause than these singular events.
It seems you were not bothered by any war. Weird.
I’m having doubts to the accuracy of this chart, as if WWII didn’t happen.
Nederland was na WOII nog steeds verzuild en conservatief; bij vrouwen werd na het trouwen / na een bepaalde leeftijd het dienstverband automatisch ontbonden en bleven ze huisvrouw. Dat maakt het ook makkelijker om veel meer kinderen te hebben, dit bleef ongeveer tot de jaren 70, toen de vrouw emancipeerde. De immigratie nam enorm toe van ex de koloniën, gastarbeiders en vluchtelingen.
Catholics and Calvinists
My grandma and grandpa had 8 siblings each. They themself had 5 kids and the only reason they hadn’t more was the health of my grandma. If you where a young couple and you did not produce kids, the pastor came asking what was wrong. There was a huge social presure to create a big family.
My mom has like 100 cousins.
Nitchen in the kitchen
In the period 1945-1968, a large-scale repatriation of Indo-Dutch people took place; more than 300,000 Indisch Dutch came to the Netherlands from the former Dutch East Indies. Also, from 1954, the inhabitants of the Surinamese part of the Kingdom became Dutch citizens, allowing them to travel freely to the Dutch part of the Kingdom
massive german immigration after Prussian (and especially WW1) wars.
Prussian invasion was an invasion and it was considered as such in much of the North West Germany and “the unification” happened much later with the death of Bismark.
We’re just more attractive
Everybody wanna be here
Immigration. Strange that other big immigrant countries (France, UK) that had colonies aren’t included.
The Netherlands is also the biggest economy of the other countries mentioned in the graph, which is a huge factor for immigration aside from colonies getting independant. Again, weirdly enough the countries with bigger economies then NL aren’t included
Not sure if it’s the thing but all my Dutch friends have at least 2 siblings.
This is not a case neither in my country nor anywhere else in Europe I’ve been to
We came to eat cheese and fuck bitches and we are all out… wait, no. We are not out of cheese?
Sorry no clue mate.
Never knew NL had less population than Belgium during the Belgian independence war around the 1830s.
That’s pretty interesting.
A factor that also is contributing is the rise of personal hygiene and vaccinations. Until the late 1800’s epidemics such as cholera, measles, typhoid and smallpox were very common. This is of course the same for other european countries, but already in the 1800’s the Netherlands was a country with a relatively large percentage of the population lived in high density cities. Infectious diseases could therefore spread relatively quick under a large part of the population.