Population of Netherlands, by gender 1829-2020

This statistic shows the total population of men and women in the Netherlands from 1829 until 2020. The graph begins in 1829, and during this time the United Kingdom of the Netherlands also included most of what is modern-day Belgium and Luxembourg, and the Netherlands had many colonies across the globe, however these numbers relate only to the population within the Netherland's current borders. From the graph it is difficult to see any clear difference between the number of men and women in the Netherlands until the late twentieth century. In 1829, when the graph begins, the number of women exceeds the number of men by 60 thousand, a difference of around 2 percent of the population. The difference remains between 50 and 60 thousand until 1940, when the Netherlands was invaded by Germany during the Second World War. During this time many people died and were displaced, and an estimated 210 thousand Dutch people lost their lives. In many other countries in Europe the war affected the number of men much more severely than the number of women, however in the Netherlands both populations remained similar, and this continued until the 1980s where the difference remained at less than 50, thousand people.
From the 1980s onwards we can see that the number of men grows at a slower rate than the number of women, and there are approximately 150 thousand more women than men during this time, although this number has shrunk to less than 100 thousand in 2020.