Summary - Poverty on the Cards 2016

• According to SCP’s ‘modest but adequate’ poverty threshold, 7.6% of the Dutch population were living in poverty in 2014.
• That figure is expected to have fallen to 7% in 2016. If the promised measures to improve purchasing power are implemented, this reduction is likely to continue in 2017.
• The three cities with the highest poverty rates in 2013 were Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. The poverty rate was at or above the national average (7.7%) in 83 of the 403 Dutch municipalities. The municipalities affected are relatively often located in the north of the country.
• Municipalities with high poverty rates were the hardest hit by the recession: the poverty rate in the 20 poorest municipalities in 2007 had grown by an average of 3.4 percentage points in 2013.

These are some of the conclusions from the SCP publication Armoede in Kaart 2016 (‘Poverty on the Cards 2016’), which was published on 27 September 2016. This is the first edition of a new series of reports on poverty in the Netherlands, published in digital format (‘card stack’). Each ‘card’ answers a particular research question, such as: What is poverty? How many people are living in poverty in the Netherlands, and what are the expectations for the near future? Whereabouts do poor people live in the Netherlands?, etc. The most recent data available for the study cover the year 2014.