Netherlands: Drop in large families

The number of families with four of more children at home has decreased drastically in the past ten years. This decrease was more pronounced for non-Western immigrants than for ethnic Dutch.

The number of families with three children barely changed in the past decade, the number of large families (four or more children) has gone down. The number of families with four children has decreased by 8%, while the number of families with 8 children has gone down by 41%. On Jan 1, 2007 the Netherlands had 1,384 families with 8 or more children, compared with 2,290 such families ten years ago.

The percent of very large families has gone down in all origin groups, and especially for non-Western immigrants. Ten years ago the percent of large families among non-Western immigrants as five times as among the ethnic Dutch, but this difference had almost disappeared.

The decrease is most marked for very large families among Moroccans. Moroccan women, and to a lesser degree, Turkish women, have relatively high fertility rates ten years ago. Now families of eight or more children are the exception among Moroccans as well. Such families are less common among Turks, Surinamese and Antilleans than among ethnic Dutch.

A large majority of large families are ethnic Dutch. In 2007, 80% of families with eight or more children were ethnic Dutch. These families live in the religious Protestant areas, the Dutch 'bible-belt'.

In the Catholic areas families have been for a longer time smaller than average. The presence of many non-western immigrants has less of an effect on the regional distribution of the large family.

Source: CBS (Dutch)

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