Poverty: new budget-based method (persons)

3.1% of persons↘change: 1y +0.4 pts · 5y -3.2 pts · 10y —as of 2024A source confidenceborn

What this number says

In 2024, 3.1% of people in the Netherlands were poor by the new official measure — after fixed costs for housing, energy and healthcare, their household had too little left for other basic needs and no liquid wealth buffer to bridge the gap. The new CBS/SCP/Nibud poverty line (introduced 2024, figures back to 2018) is budget-based: a household is poor when, after its actual housing and energy costs and healthcare at the basic-premium level, too little remains for other basic needs per Nibud's reference budgets — and it lacks liquid savings to cover the shortfall (home equity and pension wealth don't count as buffer). It counts persons, replaced five earlier poverty measures including the low-income line (indicator H3, frozen as history), and by design covers only registered private households — students are outside the poor/not-poor population entirely. The first official Dutch poverty measure built directly on what basic needs actually cost, rather than on an income threshold from the past — the closest the statistics come to 'can this household afford the basics today'.

People in poverty — NetherlandsNetherlandsPersistent (3+ years)Children (<18)Predecessor: SCP budget method (2000–2014, discontinued)

What each line measures

Netherlands.: Share of all persons in private households with observed income that fall under the budget-based poverty line in that year. 2024 is provisional — the 2023 figure was first printed as 3.1% and revised to 2.7% when definitive.
Persistent (3+ years).: Share of persons in households that were poor for at least three consecutive years — published from 2020 onwards.
Children (<18).: Share of children under 18 living in a poor household (separate CBS table) — a different population than the all-persons headline.
Predecessor: SCP budget method (2000–2014, discontinued).: SCP's old 'niet veel maar toereikend' budget measure (Armoedesignalement 2014, Tabel 3.3; 2014 from Armoede in kaart 2016) — the closest ancestor of today's method, but income-only: no wealth-buffer test and no actual housing/energy costs, both new elements of the 2024 method. Levels are NOT comparable with the headline (SCP's own 2018 revision moved 2013 from 7.9% to 7.6%), which is why the lines never touch. 2012–2013 provisional in the source; the series ends in 2014 because later years were only published under a revised method whose 2015–2016 values exist solely as unlabelled chart points. A stricter 'basisbehoeften' (subsistence-only) variant of the same series ran 4–5.4% and is in the data files.

At-risk-of-poverty rate: share below 60% of each country's median income (Eurostat EU-SILC) — a RELATIVE measure, a different construct than the Dutch budget-based lineNetherlandsAustriaBelgiumGermanyDenmarkEU-27+3 more (hover)

Peer lines share one grey on purpose: hover for countries. The compared series can differ slightly from the Dutch definition above.

Position among the same 8 countries, year by year1 = highest value

Countries are ordered by value, highest first — rank 1 means the highest number, not “the best”. A year is ranked only when all 8 countries report it; missing years stay gaps. The EU average is not a country and is not ranked.

Known criticisms of this statistic

Every statistic embodies method choices, and the substantive critiques of those choices are part of understanding the number. These are documented positions — each linked to who makes it. Listing a criticism is not endorsing it; we take no side.

The official poverty figures are incomplete: spending on childcare, commuting, extra healthcare costs and problematic debts is not counted — while nearly a third of poor households had registered debts in 2023 — and homeless people, people without residence papers, students, people in care institutions and the whole Caribbean Netherlands are missing from the measurement, even though about one in three people on the Caribbean islands lives below the poverty line.
— College voor de Rechten van de Mens (Netherlands Institute for Human Rights), 2025 · College: Nederlandse armoedecijfers zijn onvolledig
The low official count masks the problem rather than measuring it: 'Als bijna 40 procent van de huishoudens moeite heeft om rond te komen, maar de officiële cijfers suggereren dat armoede meevalt, dan meten we niet het probleem maar maskeren we het' — set against Nibud survey research in which nearly 40% of households report difficulty making ends meet, while 3.1% of people count as poor here.
— Armoedefonds (Henk de Graaf, director), 2026 · Armoedefonds: Nibud-rapport ondergraaft eigen armoededefinitie

Source & method

Source	CBS ilc_li02 · CBS manual:H8 · CBS 86127NED · CBS 86128NED
Licence	CC BY 4.0 (CBS)
Trend method	OLS over last 8 annual observations, 5% significance (MBW convention)
Revisions	None recorded since 2026-07-17. Every retrieval is stored append-only; when the source restates history, the old and new values become comparable here.
Pipeline notes	Verified live 12 Jul 2026: 86127NED (persons, 2018–2024), filters Geslacht T001038 / Leeftijd '10000 ' / PersoonsEnHuishoudenskenmerken T009002; headline PersonenArmRelatief_22: 7.1% (2018) → 3.1% (2024 voorlopig); langdurig arm (≥3 jaar op rij) publishes from 2020. Children companion 86128NED, filters Leeftijd '41300 ' / Huishoudenskenmerken T009002. Peer context Eurostat ilc_li02 AROP B_60/MED_EI (relative construct, labelled as such) — owner decision: AROP peers sit on H8, not on frozen H3.

Raw snapshot (JSON) · every observation keeps its retrieval timestamp and revision history in the public database.

Data table — People in poverty (Netherlands)

Period	Value
2024	3.1
2023	2.7
2022	3.4
2021	4.9
2020	5.1
2019	6.3
2018	7.1