Since 1946 the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment has been occupied with the national coordination of land use.

Because of its high population density the Netherlands has also reclaimed land from the sea by poldering.

These developments have caused several cabinets, notably the second Balkenende cabinet to reform the system of health care and social security to increase participation in the labour market and make people more conscious of the money they spend on health care.

The municipality with the highest TFR was Urk (3.23) followed by Valkenburg (2.83), Graafstroom (2.79) and Staphorst (2.76).

[9] The annual death rate was lowest in the municipalities of Valkenburg (2.9 per 1000), Zeewolde (3.2), Renswoude (3.4), Westervoort and Zeevang (both 3.9).

[10] 16.4% of the total births in 2003 were to parents of non-European origin, although they account for only 12.4% of the population in the 25-34 age group.

[13] The total fertility rate is the annual average number of children born per woman over her lifespan.

The most common countries of birth being: Belgium, Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom.

11.4% of persons aged 0–50 of 'Dutch background' belonged to the 'third generation', the majority descending from Western immigrants.

[25] As the result of immigration from overseas, the Netherlands have a sizeable minority of non-indigenous peoples.

Out of a total of 101,150 people immigrating into the Netherlands in 2006, 66,658 were from Europe, Oceania, the Americas or Japan, and 34,492 were from other (mostly developing) countries.

Illegal immigration to the Netherlands results in automatic deportation[30] but this is often not enforced for various reasons such as unknown country of origin, etc.

[31][32][33][34] By 2017, persons with an immigration background, both western and non-western, formed a majority in Amsterdam (2011), Rotterdam (2013) and The Hague, the three largest cities of the Netherlands.

[35] In 2005, the governmental Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau in its annual report, noted recurring integration problems for ethnic minorities.

[36] According to a 2010 Statistics Netherlands report, the third generation of non-Western immigrants was predominantly young with 80% being younger than 15, while growing with 10% each year.

The non-Western immigrant population as a whole has 1.5 to 2 times the benefit dependence compared to the natives.

A majority of these (50,86%) are from seven backgrounds alone: Turks (inc. Kurds), Moroccans (inc. Berbers), Surinamese, Indonesians (inc. Moluccans), Germans, Poles and Curaçao.

[41] With the huge expansion of the European Union during the 2000s, the Netherlands has seen a rise in the number of immigrants coming from new member states.

[44] In addition, a large number of Syrians moved to the Netherlands in the 2010s mostly as refugees, with the population increasing seven-fold between 2014 and 2019.

In the 1950s' and early 1960s, 560,000 people migrated to the United States, South Africa, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, leaving their war-torn and overpopulated home country behind.

There is considerable migration towards neighbouring states, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom and to the Netherlands Antilles.

Furthermore, almost half of the current emigration consists of people returning to their country of birth, including rejected asylum seekers, after the more stringent migration laws were implemented.

[54] Unemployment, youth ages 15–24 In 2013, Statistics Netherlands found that 26% of the population identified as Roman Catholic, 16% as Protestant, 5% as Muslim, and 6% as "other" (the last includes other Christian denominations, Hindus 0.6%, Jews 0.1%, and Buddhists 0.4%).

[55] In 2019, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that for the first time non-religious people were in the majority in the Netherlands.

Another group of dialects granted the status of regional language is Limburgish, which is spoken in the south-eastern province of Limburg.

Major immigrant languages are Indonesian, Turkish, Arabic, Berber, Papiamento, German and Polish.