The differences between Dutch households in terms of wealth have decreased slightly every year since 2015. That is the conclusion of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) on the basis of figures published on Thursday. An important nuance: the decreased inequality is explicitly related to home ownership. Six in ten Dutch households own a home and have benefited in recent years from an improving housing market after the economic crisis. If the researchers do not count home ownership as equity, the differences between households have remained virtually stable since 2011.
The very rich, among others, have become relatively less wealthy in recent years. In January 2020, the 10 percent most wealthy households owned more than 60 percent (1,830 billion euros) of the wealth of all households together. Five years earlier, it was still 70 percent. Although inequality has decreased somewhat, it is still significant. At the beginning of last year, for example, the least wealthy households jointly held 6.1 billion euros, almost three hundred times less than the most wealthy households.
Nevertheless, according to the CBS, it is mainly the less well-off Dutch who have improved in the past ten years. Until 2020, the least wealthy households had more debt than assets. In 2013 and 2014, the total assets of this group even reached a low of -70 billion euros. That picture has recently changed: at the beginning of last year, the wealth of these households was above zero for the first time in ten years.
Assets abroad
A comment on the CBS wealth statistics, Professor Bas Jacobs told earlier this year NRC, is that assets placed abroad and money hidden in family foundations remain out of the picture.
According to Statistics Netherlands, income inequality has remained virtually unchanged since 2011, mainly as a result of social benefits, taxes and contributions. Also for that period, between 1990 and 2010, inequality remained fairly stable.
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