The number of households in the Netherlands with assets of one million euros or more will increase again in 2021. This is reported by the Central Bureau of Statistics on the basis of the most recent figures. It is the seventh year in a row that the number of millionaires has increased.
There were a total of 317,000 millionaire households on 1 January 2021, an increase of 32,000 compared to 2020. They had an average capital of 1.6 million euros. A quarter of the millionaires had assets between 2 and 5 million euros, and three percent of the millionaires have assets of 10 million euros or more.
Statistics Netherlands has included the value of the owner-occupied home and any mortgage debt. A non-millionaire household has an average capital of 75,000 euros.
Many self-employed
Two-thirds of working millionaires are self-employed. In agriculture, for example, in 2021, 42 percent of the self-employed were millionaires. This mainly concerns people in dairy farming or the cultivation of grains or vegetables. Much of the wealth in agriculture is in buildings, land and machines.
Many self-employed people are also millionaires in financial services and real estate. The latter group is undoubtedly influenced by the fact that the value of real estate, such as rental properties, has risen sharply in recent years. More than a third of millionaires are retired, and 22 percent are employed somewhere.
Laren and Bloemendaal
According to Statistics Netherlands, the municipalities of Bloemendaal and Laren have the most millionaires. In these municipalities about three in ten households are millionaires. The Limburg municipalities of Kerkrade, Brunssum, Landgraaf and Heerlen have the fewest millionaires, just like Nissewaard in South Holland.
Last year, a study showed that a quarter of the total wealth in the Netherlands is owned by 1 percent of households. The researchers then recommended various tax measures to distribute the tax burden more fairly.
- ‘Wealths use their own charities as a tax construction’
- ‘The Netherlands will gain 350 millionaires this year through migration’
- Young self-made millionaires see wealth grow rapidly
