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People
Cultural Demography
The population of the Netherlands is over 16 million. The population is most densely concentrated heavily in the western part of the country, referred to as the "Randstad." Indeed, the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with an average of about 1.100 people per square mile, or 425 people per square kilometer. Although the name Netherlands is often used interchangeably with Holland, in fact Holland refers only to the certain provinces.
The English word "Dutch" derives from the German deutsch or "German." In fact, "Dutch" referred originally to both Germany and the Netherlands, but came to refer only to the people and language of the Netherlands at the time of independence in the seventeenth century.
Standard Dutch - also called Nederlands -- is the official language. This is the language used by the media, at schools and universities, and in governance. The Dutch language shares some similarity with German in both syntax and spelling, and includes technical or cultural words from French and English. Friesian is the second official language of the Netherlands and is spoken by a half million Friesians. In addition, there are about twenty-five major dialects of Dutch. Meanwhile, English is widely spoken and understood, as are several other European languages.
In terms of religious affiliation, it is estimated that 34 percent are Roman Catholic, 25 percent are Protestant (including Reformed Protestant and Dutch Reformed), three percent are Muslim, and the remaining two percent belong to other religions. A significant portion of the population -- 36 percent -- claim to be unaffiliated or non-religious, reflecting the strong secular aspect of the country.
The Dutch people are primarily of Germanic stock with some Gallo-Celtic mixture. Today, ethnic Dutch comprise approximately 83 percent of the Netherlands' total population. Other resident ethnic groups include other Europeans and Westerners numbering about eight percent of the total population. Moroccans, Turks, Surinamese, Antilleans and Indonesians make up the remaining nine percent of the population of the Netherlands.
The substantial number of people from other countries reflects the Netherlands' legacy of providing safe haven for ethnic minorities fleeing from discrimination and persecution. In fact, in the 16th and 17th centuries, many Jews from Spain and Portugal, as well as Protestant merchants from the Spanish-ruled southern Netherlands, found refuge in the Netherlands. Since the 20th century, the ethnic makeup has expanded as refugees from war-torn countries, workers from the Mediterranean, and immigrants from the former colonial enclaves (Indonesia, the Antilles and Suriname particularly), have all found new homes in the Netherlands, further expanding its cultural makeup.
It should be noted that the Netherlands does not have a strong or monolithic national culture. if fact, the Dutch tendency is to reject that totalizing or absolutist notion, with some elements characterizing it as undesirable nationalism. Instead, the Dutch tend to emphasize the country's cosmopolitanism, tolerance of differences, and internationalist orientation. Still, one cannot ignore the fact that some regions and cultures, such as that of the Friesians and Randstad have held a particular type of dominance on the Dutch landscape.
Human Development
In terms of human development, the Dutch population has an average life expectancy at birth of 78.5 years of age (75.7 years for males, 81.5 years for females). Estimates in recent years show that the population growth rate is 0.53 percent. Meanwhile, the infant mortality rate is 4.31 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to recent estimates. An estimated 99 percent of the population, age 15 and older, can read and write.
About 10.8 percent of GDP is spent on health expenditures in this country; about 5.3 percent of GDP is spent on educational expenditures. Access to education, sanitation, water, and health is regarded to be excellent.
One notable measure used to determine a country's quality of life is the Human Development Index (HDI), which has been compiled annually since 1990 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The HDI is a composite of several indicators, which measure a country's achievements in three main arenas of human development: longevity, knowledge and education, as well as economic standard of living. In a recent ranking of 169 countries, the HDI placed the Netherlands in the very high human development category, at 7th place.
Editor's Note: Although the concept of human development is complicated and cannot be properly captured by values and indices, the HDI, which is calculated and updated annually, offers a wide-ranging assessment of human development in certain countries, not based solely upon traditional economic and financial indicators.
Written by Dr. Denise Youngblood Coleman, Editor in Chief, www.countrywatch.com; see Bibliography for research sources.
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