History and Background Information

The Netherlands, informally known as Holland, is located in Northwestern Europe, and consists of twelve provinces. It shares borders with Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and a North Sea coastline to the north and to the west. The official language of the country is Dutch, with other dialects recognized such as West Frisian, Dutch Low Saxon, Limburgish, and Yiddish to name a few. The four largest cities are Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht. Amsterdam is the country’s most populous city, as well as the nominal capital. The Hague holds the seat of the States General, Cabinet and the Supreme Court. The Port of Rotterdam is the busiest seaport in Europe.

The Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, G10, NATO, OECD and WTO. The Hague hosts several international organizations and international courts.

The Netherlands was declared a unitary state on January 19th 1795 by Dutch republicans, with the help of the French revolutionaries. From 1806 - 1810, however, the Kingdom of Holland was ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte as a puppet kingdom through his brother Louis Bonaparte to control the region more effectively. The Dutch King chose to serve Dutch interests as opposed to Napoleon’s interests, however, and was forced to abdicate on July 1st 1810. Napoleon sent in an army, and the Netherlands became a part of the French empire until Napoleon was defeated in the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. Following the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the Southern Netherlands were added to the Northern region and created a strong, unified kingdom which bordered France. In 1830, the Cultivation System from the Dutch East Indies Company was introduced, which brought the country enormous wealth and self-sufficiency.

The Netherlands enslaved many territories during Colonial Imperialism, and abolished slavery in its colonies in 1863. In Suriname, the law stipulated there would be a mandatory 10-year transition, so enslaved people did not become free until 1873.

Government

The Netherlands operated as a constitutional monarchy since 1815, and transitioned into a parliamentary democracy in 1848. Dutch politics and governance are characterized by an effort to achieve broad consensus on important issues, regarding both the political community and society as a whole. In 2017, the economist ranked the Netherlands as the 11th most democratic country in the world.

The monarch is the head of state, although in actuality practice limited powers. The executive power is formed by the Council of Ministers. The head of government is the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, who is often the leader of the largest party of the coalition. The cabinet is responsible to the bicameral parliament, the States General, which also has legislative powers. The 150 members of the House of Representatives, the lower house, are elected in direct elections on the basis of party-list proportional representation. These elections are held once every four years, or earlier in cases of motions of no confidence or similar situations.

Fertility

Crude Birth Rate

Zooming In

The crude birth rate indicates the number of live births occurring during the year, per 1,000 population estimated at midyear (The World Bank). It is referred to as “crude” because the denominator includes many people who are not at the risk of childbearing, such a girls under the age of 15, women over the age of 50, and men (Poston & Bouvier 61). If you hover your mouse over the 2020 data point in the figure above, you will see that in 2020, the CBR was 9.9 (The World Bank). This means for every 10,000 people, there were 99 births. The CBR is not the best measure of fertility, considering the denominator includes men and pre-pubescent girls (and these people are not capable of giving birth).

General Fertility Rate

The General Fertility Rate (GFR) is calculated in a similar way to the CBR, and is statistically superior, because it restricts the denominator to women of childbearing age. I was not able to obtain time-series data for the Netherlands’ General Fertility Rate. Instead, I calculated it for the year 2020 by recording the number of women in their childbearing years (15-49) in 2020 in the Netherlands (3,632,988) (PopulationPyramid.net) and dividing it by the number of live births in 2020 (168,681) (Statista) to receive a GFR score of 21.5. This means that, in 2020, there were around 215 babies born in the Netherlands for every 10,000 women between the ages of 15 and 49.

Age Specific Fertility Rates, by cohort

The ASFR for women 15 - 19 has remained relatively low over time, with a slight increase from around 1960 - 1970, followed by a decrease between 1970 - 1980. Since 2000, the ASFR for women between 15 and 19 has been decreasing, and has remained around 5 since 2005.

Age Specific Fertility Rate, 20 - 24

The ASFR for women between 20 - 24 is significantly higher than the previous cohort, and you can tell because the scale of the Y axis is much higher. Since the 1970s, the ASFR for this cohort has been decreasing, and has remained around 30 since roughly 2012.

Age Specific Fertility Rate, 25 - 29

This cohort has the largest scale on the Y axis, because this is a societally appropriate age for women to be married and start their families. The difference between the ASFR for this cohort around 1960 compared to 2017, however, is drastic. In 1964, the ASFR for this cohort was 213.48. This means for every 1000 women between the ages of 25 and 29 in 1964 in the Netherlands, over 213 babies would be born to them. Compared to 2017, this number is 94.98, meaning over 94 babies would be born to 1000 women between these ages. There could be many reasons for the drastic decrease in ASFR for this cohort, like modern medicine allowing for women to have babies later in life, or cultural values changing, allowing for women to start a career before beginning a family.

Age Specific Fertility Rate, 30 - 34

This cohort is interesting because is signifies the beginning of the cohorts where the ASFR dips down between 1960 and 1980, and then steadily increases again. It does not quite reach the levels where it previously resided, yet it works steadily back up between the years of roughly 1980 and 2010. This is the first graph that does not resemble the others because of this reason. As previously stated, the reason for this may be that women are now waiting longer to have children due to different reasons.

Age Specific Fertility Rate, 35 - 39

Similar to the ASFR for women between 30 and 34, this cohort also experienced an increase in ASFR in recent years. Like all over fertility rates, the ASFR for this cohort decreased between 1960 and 1980, yet then experienced an increase between 1980 and 2020, although not as prominent as the ASFR for women between 30 and 34. For the same reason as with the previous graph, the increase in this ASFR may be explained due to women choosing to have children later in life as time goes on.

Age Specific Fertility Rate, 40 - 44
Age Specific Fertility Rate, 45- 49

The Age Specific Fertility Rate (ASFR) focuses on births to women according to their age. Usually, the female population is split into seven cohorts of year five year age ranges from 15 - 49. In 2017, the ASFR for women 15 - 19 was 2.77, meaning for every 1000 women between the ages of 15 and 19 in 2017 in the Netherlands, over 2 babies were born to them. The ASFR for women 20 - 24 was 26.31, meaning for every 1000 women between the ages of 20 and 24 in 2017 in the Netherlands, over 26 babies were born to them. The ASFR for women 25 - 29 was 94.98, meaning for every 1000 women between the ages of 25 and 29 in 2017 in the Netherlands, over 94 babies were born to them. The ASFR for women 30 - 34 was 127.76, meaning for every 1000 women between the ages of 30 and 34 in 2017 in the Netherlands, over 127 babies were born to them. The ASFR for women 35 - 39 was 61.03, meaning for every 1000 women between the ages of 35 and 39 in 2017 in the Netherlands, over 61 babies were born to them. The ASFR for women 40 - 44 was 10.4, meaning for every 1000 women between the ages of 40 and 44 in 2017 in the Netherlands, over 10 babies were born to them. Finally, the ASFR for women 45 - 49 was 0.50, meaning for every 1000 women between the ages of 45 and 49 in 2017 in the Netherlands, under one baby was born to them.

Notice how the Y-axis scale changes for each of these cohorts. The ASFR rates for women between the ages of 25 and 29 has the highest reaching axis, going all the way up to 210. Behind that, the second highest axis is the cohort of women between the ages of 30 and 34. Something interesting to note is that while historically the ASFR for women 25-29 was much higher than the ASFR for women 30 - 34, in contemporary times the ASFR for women 30 - 34 is now higher than the ASFR for women 25 - 29. This signals that women are waiting longer to have children than historically. This could be due to numerous factors, such as modern medicine allowing for women to have children later in life or women entering the workforce and then deciding to start families once they have established a career.

Total Fertility Rate

The total fertility rate “provides a single fertility value… for a specific period of time” (Poston & Bouvier 66). The TFR is comprised on the number of births that a hypothetical group of 1,000 women would produce during their reproductive years (ages 15 - 49) if the same schedule of age fertility rates persisted. For the Netherlands, in 2020, the TFR was 1.46, meaning for every 1,000 women aged 15 - 49 in 2020 in the Netherlands, if the same schedule of ASFRs continue through the women’s reproductive careers, over 1 child would be born to them.

Zooming In

Gross Reproduction Rate

The Gross Reproduction Rate (GRR) is a “standardized rate similar to the TFR, except that it is based on the sum of age-specific rates that include only female births in the numerators” (Poston & Bouvier 71). In the Netherlands in 2020, there were 168,681 live births (Statista), 86,497 male and 82,184 female births (statista). The sex ratio for the Netherlands in 2020 is 105, meaning for every 100 girls born this year there were 105 boys. The multiplier in this instance is 0.487, which makes the GRR in the Netherlands in 2020 0.71. This means that the number of daughters 1000 women would bear is the ASFRs stayed constant through their childbearing years, and if none of those women died during their childbearing year, is 710 daughters. See below the GRR values for the years 2015 - 2020

##   Year   GRR
## 1 2015 0.750
## 2 2016 0.749
## 3 2017 0.740
## 4 2018 0.742
## 5 2019 0.722
## 6 2020 0.711

Net Reproduction Rate

The Net Reproduction Rate (NRR) is the “measure of the number of daughters who will be born to a hypothetical cohort of 1000 mothers, taking into account the mortality of the mothers from the time of their birth” (Poston & Bouvier 72). The NRR for the Netherlands in 2020 was 0.75, meaning the average number of daughters 1000 women would bear if the ASFRs and mortality rates stayed constant is around 750 daughters. Since the GRR and NRR rates in 2020 in the Netherlands are fairly similar, this means mortality is relatively low.

Disclaimer

I understand this format is unique from the types of reports you typically receive. While I understand if in the future you would like for me to submit my mortality and migration reports in a more traditional manner (like a written paper via PDF etc.), I would like to express how much I enjoyed compiling this report in a more interactive way. I hope you enjoy playing around with the graphs I created (most of this information I had to source from the internet and then scrape and clean the data before being able to code them into graphs). I really enjoyed compiling this report in a way that is user-friendly and interactive, so I hope you are able to enjoy it as well. As I said, if you would prefer for me to continue this work in a more traditional manner, please let me know and I would be happy to :) Thank you!