Population Pressure in the Netherlands

Abstract

One cannot have read many articles or books about the population of Western Europe during the past several decades without noting the recurrent phrase: “except for the Netherlands”. During the 1930’s, when it was the fashion, for example, to predict when the last Englishman would die, Holland was the one country in Northwest Europe whose net reproduction rate remained above unity. In the general upswing of the birth rate during and after the war, Holland’s reached a maximum of 30.2 in 1946, almost half again as large as that of any other country in Northwest Europe. Moreover, the death rate (except for the war years) has been one of the lowest in the world, and so the population of this already crowded country is increasing by two percent per year. At the turn of the century, it was slightly over 5 million; some time during October 1949, it passed 10 million. This increase is perhaps more startling when compared with that of Northwest Europe as a whole: