The new right-wing Dutch government, which has promised the toughest anti-immigrant regime ever, has been warned that an ageing population means the country will need an addition three million migrants to shore up the workforce and pay taxes by 2040.
With an area roughly the size of Munster, the population of the Netherlands hit 18 million on Thursday, according to the Central Statistics Bureau, which calculated in a new analysis that immigrants account for 16 per cent of that figure.
The report also showed that since 2015 immigrants have accounted for almost the entirety of annual population growth in a country, where the domestic birth rate has been falling as the indigenous population ages.
The impact of that fall-off has been considerable. The post-second World War “baby boom” from 1945 to 1970 increased the population by almost four million or about 150,000 a year. However, that figure is now about 120,000 a year.
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Dutch women today, the statistics bureau says, typically have an average of 1.43 children, which is below the level needed to keep the population on an even keel economically. The population will reach 19 million in 2037, and will probably – subject to fluctuations from one year to the next – reach 20 million by 2070, the bureau estimates.
In the meantime by 2040 a quarter of the Dutch population will be 65 or older – and the country will need an urgent injection of some three million men and women into the labour force.
Although current population growth is mainly due to migration from war zones such as Syria and Ukraine, the general upward trend in the population should come as no surprise to governments – given that the increase from 16 to 17 million took 15 years.
Nor are there any surprises as to why the increase in the population has come about – which has primarily to do with the country’s prosperity.
Apart from the flight from Ukraine and the Middle East, the statistics bureau lists the main historical “pull” factors as EU expansion and internal open borders, a resilient economy, overseas students travelling to study and a general willingness in the Netherlands to do business through English.
As a result the largest migrant groups are immigrants from other EU countries, followed by Indonesia, which has colonial links to the Netherlands, and then Turkey, whose guest workers were accepted and established strong family ties in the 1960s and 1970s.
As to who was the 18 millionth arrival in the Netherlands on the red letter day, Thursday, August 15th, that’s impossible to tell, said a CBS spokesperson. “All we can say is that statistically there’s is a greater chance he or she will be an immigrant – simply because that’s where the population growth is to be found.”
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