The Dutch national statistics office CBS has compared the present-day standard of well-being among the 27 EU states and found that the Netherlands came second, with only Sweden scoring higher.
The CBS included 23 key indicators divided over 8 themes, such as subjective well-being, material well-being, health, labour & leisure time, housing and safety. The Netherlands scores comparatively high on 14 of these 23 key indicators and comparatively low in only 2.
Negative indicators are the fact that spending on housing is high and healthy women’s life expectancy is lower than in other EU countries. The Netherlands comes in at a mere 20th position on the latter topic.
On the plus side, in the Netherlands people show a lot of trust in others, do an above-average amount of volunteer work and are relatively highly educated. Moreover, employment is low and the Dutch have the most contact with family, friends and neighbours, with the vast majority having some form of contact at least once a week.
Not too bad for a small country whose primary concern was once keeping out the water.
Our relocation team are available for information and to support moves to the Netherlands at amsterdam@eresrelocation.com or +31 (0)23 737 0102.
