While wealth inequality has decreased in the Netherlands in recent years, the wealthiest 10% of households still control 56% of the nation’s wealth, new data from Statistics Netherlands (CBS) has found.
Household wealth
As of the beginning of 2023, the total household wealth in the Netherlands stood at over €2.6 trillion. The wealthiest 10% control €1.5 trillion of this, according to the data.
This cohort’s share of the nation’s wealth has steadily declined – it stood at 70% in 2015.
Within this group, the top one percent of earners accounted for 23% of the total wealth, while the top 0.1 percent—which includes approximately 82,000 households—held 10%, or €260 billion.
Wealth distribution among the remaining 90% of households amounted to just under €1.2 trillion, however there are notable disparities within this group – for example, the lowest-earning 10% had a combined negative wealth of €38 billion due to debts exceeding their assets.
Home ownership
As regards home ownership, nearly 60% of Dutch households owned their own homes as of 2023.
For many, this was their primary asset, however among the top-earning 10%, 30% of assets were tied to significant business interests, a figure that rose to 54% for the top one percent.
Elsewhere, employment status varied across wealth groups, Statistics Netherlands noted. The lowest-earning decile (or 10%), characterised by negative wealth, primarily consisted of working households, but included a higher-than-average proportion of self-employed individuals and benefit recipients.
Moving up the wealth spectrum, the share of employed persons peaked in the middle deciles before declining in the wealthiest groups. In the top decile, 40% of households derived income from pensions, 33% from employment, and 27% from self-employment. Read more here.
