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ANNOUNCEMENTS••Edited
Last year, for the first time since 1900, more people died in the Netherlands than were born. This can be seen from an estimate by the Central Statistical Office. However, the population has grown due to the high number of migrants arriving in the Netherlands.
Birth and death rates are close, last year 168,000 babies were born, while 169,000 people lost their lives.
“Having a natural population decline for the first time is very special,” says CBS’ Dick ter Steege in the NOS Radio 1 Newspaper. The statistics office has never seen this before. At least not since 1900, the year with the oldest comparable data available for Statistics Netherlands.
Crown
December data was not yet available. For that month, Statistics Netherlands relied on an estimate, in order to be able to present population data in January. That’s how it goes every year, and the forecast for December is generally good, according to Ter Steege.
The excess mortality is partly made up of victims of the corona virus, but for some no explanation has yet been found. Even in World War II, the number of births exceeded the number of deaths.
It is not yet certain whether the contraction will continue. “We have seen that births have been declining for years and mortality is also increasing, but in the last three years mortality has been slightly higher due to the coronavirus,” says Ter Steege. “So in that sense, this drop could be temporary. If the excess mortality ends next year, the number of children will be slightly higher than the number of people who die.”
Migration
Despite the natural decline, the population has grown due to migration. Compared to a year earlier, the growth has almost doubled. In 2021, 115,000 inhabitants were added, last year the increase was almost 227,000 inhabitants. The Netherlands now has a total of over 17.8 million people.
Last year a record number of migrants arrived in our country: 402,000. That’s 150,000 more than the previous year.
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The war in Ukraine, in particular, has contributed to the significant increase in the number of migrants. Especially in the first months after the invasion of Russia (February 24, 2022), relatively many people came to the Netherlands.
The Ukrainian refugees have spread to almost all municipalities. Renswoude (Utrecht), Gennep (Limburg) and Pekela (Groningen) received relatively the largest number of new arrivals from that country: more than 20 per thousand inhabitants.
Among the top five largest groups of migrants who arrived in the Netherlands last year, Syria, Turkey and India rank second to fourth. A year earlier, Poles were still the second largest group of newcomers, after Syria. But Polish migrants now form the fifth largest group of new arrivals in the Netherlands.
It is difficult to predict whether migrants will continue to arrive in the Netherlands at the same rate, according to Ter Steege. “As far as migration is concerned, we never really know what is going to happen. In the last few years we have seen that migration is really high. There is a lot of work in the Netherlands, you can study here, so our country has a big appeal.” We don’t know what happens to Ukrainian people, it really depends on the situation in Ukraine itself. Maybe they’ll come back, maybe not.”
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Urk provided more natural growth
Last year only nine of the 344 Dutch municipalities recorded a decrease in the number of inhabitants. The municipality of Heumen in Gelderland took the cake with a decline of 21.8 people per thousand inhabitants. Followed by Terschelling (-5.6 per thousand) and Uitgeest (-5.3 per thousand).
On the other end of the spectrum, the municipality of Urk experienced the highest growth in 2022 due to “natural increase” (births minus deaths). There were 13 people for every thousand inhabitants. In any case, population growth has been fastest in Flevoland, and Almere and Zeewolde are also in the top ten fastest growing municipalities.
See in the graph below if your municipality grew in 2022
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Statistics Netherlands also expects the population to grow relatively rapidly in the coming years, but the pace will slow down thereafter. According to a forecast by the statistics office, the Netherlands will have 20 million inhabitants in 2056.
