In the Netherlands, between 2012 and 2024, real estate prices increased in Amsterdam and Rotterdam according to CBS-Kadaster nominal indices, while a study comparing intergenerational gaps observed in 2017 across 28 countries does not establish how mobility evolved over time. This coincidence is not one. The study observes intergenerational differences in social status based on family origin. Denmark has implemented housing market regulation; the differences in mobility between the two countries deserve attention.
The essentials
- A 2025 study based on 2017 data assigns the Netherlands a mobility indicator of 2.96, among the highest of the 28 countries.
- The share in permanent employment saw variations between 2012 and 2021 according to CBS data; this source covers neither the 25-35 age group nor 2024.
- Real estate prices have risen in major Dutch cities, but causal analysis is necessary to attribute to this increase a strengthening of the role of family wealth.
- In 2017, the composite indicator was slightly higher in Denmark than in the Netherlands, without demonstration of causality by housing policies.
- If trends persist, a regime shift remains possible: the ability of current generations to pass on assets could be reduced, affecting the trajectories of future children.
The Netherlands, an old model that wavers
For decades, the Netherlands ranked among Europe’s champions of social mobility. A high-performing education system, broad social safety nets, a relatively fluid labor market: the country embodied the Scandinavian promise applied to an open market economy. The study published in 2025 in Population Medicine, covering 28 European countries using Eurobarometer wave 88.4 from December 2017, compares intergenerational gaps observed at that date.
The 2025 study classifies the Netherlands among high-mobility countries with a score of 2.96, tied with Sweden and behind Denmark at 3.15. What matters here is not the raw figure but the trajectory: a country that was at the top of the ranking and falls is a stronger signal than a country that stagnates in the middle of the table.
Intergenerational mobility measures the probability that a child will achieve a level of income or social status different from that of their parents. When it declines, social class becomes more predictive from one generation to the next. Family origin plays a role in determining social trajectories. Dutch data describe an association between parental status and adult trajectory.
Employment fragmentation freezes trajectories
The first mechanism is that of work. CBS reports for 30-year-olds an evolution in the share of permanent employment between 2012 and 2021. This reduction is significant in an economy reputed to be flexible yet protective.
Permanent employment is associated with higher frequency of homeownership and family life among people in their thirties. Flexible employment is correlated with lower rates of homeownership, cohabitation, and parenthood among people in their thirties. American economist Paul Osterman, whose work focuses on job quality and its social consequences, has shown that labor market precarity is not read only in unemployment statistics but in individual trajectories. Certain precarious contracts early in a career are associated with poorer trajectories later on.
The Dutch case illustrates this thesis strikingly. The OECD has characterized the segmentation of the Dutch labor market, between regular contracts and various forms of non-standard employment, as an old and significant problem. This segmentation is not socially neutral: some young people who grew up in households receiving social assistance show a higher frequency of temporary contracts. Employment and housing conditions are associated with certain transitions of young adults.
Housing as a class lock
The second mechanism is that of real estate. Real estate prices in Amsterdam and Rotterdam have risen since 2012, changing housing access conditions. High real estate prices in skilled employment zones create barriers to entry for first-time buyers. Inheritances and donations are associated with higher wealth, and rising real estate prices have increased wealth inequalities; the specificity of high-price urban areas is not established by this source.
The effect is twofold. Access to homeownership varies depending on whether parents are homeowners or renters. Access to homeownership varies depending on whether parents are homeowners or renters. In the Netherlands, the social housing sector is subject to allocation rules targeting primarily low-income households.
A competing reading of this phenomenon exists, carried by part of the market-liberal tradition. Philippe Aghion, whose work on Schumpeterian growth emphasizes the role of creative destruction and flexibility, would likely argue that the fluidity of the Dutch labor market, even if fragmented, creates dynamics of innovation that rigidifying contracts might stifle, and that high real estate prices also signal an attractive and productive economy. This reading, however, leaves unanswered the question of distribution: an economy that creates wealth by concentrating it in the hands of those who already own assets erodes its own mobility.
The data from the study do not permit drawing conclusions about the coexistence of growth and a temporal decline in mobility in the Netherlands.
The Danish case: regulate to preserve
Denmark offers the most instructive counterpoint. In 2017, the mobility indicator was slightly higher in Denmark at 3.15 than in the Netherlands at 2.96. Real estate prices in Denmark have also risen, but in a context of housing market regulation and maintenance of the social rental sector.
The data allow for one conclusion: social mobility results from public policies that can preserve it or let it erode, and not from a cultural trait or a national constant. In 2017, Denmark presents a composite mobility indicator higher than that of the Netherlands; the causal role of its policies is not established by this study.
This point is essential for understanding why this Dutch decline is a political signal, not merely a statistical one. It refutes the idea that mobility would be a stable property of Nordic societies or open economies. It is contingent. It seems to depend on concrete choices regarding housing market regulation, the organization of professional transitions, and protection of young adults. Education alone is not enough: stable housing in adolescence matters as much as school, and European data confirm that this interdependence extends well beyond childhood.
The structures that 2030 could freeze
The horizon 2030-2035 deserves careful examination.
The cohort of 25-35 year-olds in 2024, those who experienced the rise of job precarity and the closure of the real estate market, will be the cohort of 35-45 year-olds in 2034. They are the ones who will decide how much they can invest in their children’s trajectories: academic support, housing, networks, startup capital. If a substantial share of them has not accessed homeownership, has not built stable savings, and has not constructed a solid professional trajectory by age 35, their ability to transmit will be reduced. The intergenerational mobility that an equivalent study will measure in 2040 will be that of these children.
Two trajectories are plausible. In the first, the Netherlands lets trends continue. Employment segmentation could deepen and mobility decline could accelerate, bringing the country closer to less successful performers in the European ranking.
This shift would happen slowly, cohort after cohort, and remain invisible until data make it indisputable.
In the second, the Netherlands undertakes a correction. Signals already exist: the government announced in 2023 measures in favor of affordable housing and the intermediate rental market for middle incomes, and debate on regulating short-term contracts has regained vigor in public discussion. Measures to regulate the rental market, curb contract flexibility, and expand borrowing guarantees for first-time buyers could stabilize mobility.
What would make it possible to distinguish between these trajectories is, first, the evolution of the share of 25-35 year-olds in stable employment: if it rises, that is the signal of a real correction. It is next the indicator of Affordable housing construction in metropolitan areas: if Amsterdam and Rotterdam return to a significant construction pace in accessible segments, pressure on first-time buyers will ease. It is finally the trajectory of the mobility score itself, measured in the next waves of EU-SILC.
Other countries that the data raise questions for
The 2025 Population Medicine study covers 28 European countries based on 2017 data. The study compares mobility levels between countries in 2017 without identifying decline over time in several Western European economies. Austria, Sweden in certain metropolitan areas, and to a lesser extent Belgium present similar configurations: labor markets fragmenting, real estate markets accelerating, and growing pressures on mobility for young cohorts.
The phenomenon is also documented in the United States, where Chetty’s work shows strong local variation in mobility and average correlation with higher real estate prices, but not that the local real estate market alone explains this variation. Available data confirm that incomes vary strongly by education level, without ranking inheritance ahead of education: the European dynamic reflects this, with a lag of a few years. The European data consulted measure a score of intergenerational social status in 2017 without measuring the capture of asset gains.
The particularity of the Netherlands is to have been, until recently, a counterexample. A country reputed to combine labor market flexibility, social mobility, social housing, and an open market economy. This model presents signals of fragility according to 2017 data. Available sources document historical transformations of the Dutch labor market, housing, and society.
One question remains open: at what point does a decline in mobility become self-perpetuating. Current data do not permit concluding whether this threshold has been reached in the Netherlands. They allow saying that the direction deserves attention and that comparable countries have managed to arrest this phenomenon. These elements justify raising the question politically, before 2030 data replace it.
Sources
- Population Medicine, Intergenerational mobility in 28 European countries: A new measure from a public health perspective (2026)
- Statistics Netherlands (CBS), Data on employment of 25-35 year-olds and real estate markets in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, 2012-2024 (CBS Netherlands, national statistics)
- OECD, Employment Outlook Netherlands 2025 (labor market segmentation)
- Paul Osterman, Good Jobs America (MIT Press) and work on job quality and social mobility
- Philippe Aghion, work on Schumpeterian growth and market flexibility (Collège de France / London School of Economics)
- Harmonized EU-SILC data, Eurostat, survey on income and living conditions, waves 2012-2024
