Introduction

Abstract

Modern Netherlands is now certainly the most densely populated of European countries. It may well be, as the Dutch assert, the most crowded country in the world. The relation between its total population and total land area shows a figure of 851 persons per square mile. This high density results from rapid and sustained natural increase of population, from 2.6 millions in 1829 to 5.1 millions in 1899, 10.2 millions in 1949 and 11.9 millions in 1963. The average annual increase since 1950 has been of the order of 145,000 people. The Dutch birth-rate is relatively high, the death-rate probably the lowest in the world, and the net reproduction rate has been consistently well above unity during the present century.¹ Loss of colonies after the war also contributed to recent population increase and brought back about a quarter of a million people to the homeland. The Central Bureau for Statistics has estimated that the population may well have risen to 14½ millions by 1980 and 18 millions by the end of the century.