Netherlands Retirement Outlook 2026

1The wealth picture

Older Dutch households are wealthy, and typical wealth peaks for households aged 65 to 74. Estates are growing, and most of this wealth stays in the Netherlands.^{1, 8}

• Aged 65+, 1 Jan 2024€1,012bnNet wealth of households whose main earner is 65 or older: 36.7% of the total (our calculation). Provisional¹
• Share held by 55+63.6%€1,752.9 billion of €2,754.4 billion of household net wealth, 1 January 2024 (our calculation)¹
• Median, aged 65 to 74€276,900Household net wealth, the highest of any age group; €135,500 for all households¹

• Left at death, 2023€33.6bnby 168,700 people who died (provisional); €15.2 billion in 2013⁷
• Usual yearly estates€25–30bnCPB's range, with about €2.5 billion of inheritance tax a year⁸
• Declared gifts, 2022€15.4bn135,400 declared gifts and €0.8 billion of gift tax. An estimated three in four gifts from parents to children fall below the yearly exemption and need no declaration⁸

Different measures from different sources: do not add them up. CBS's 2023 total is above CPB's usual range, which rests on 2022 and earlier years, and CBS says estate figures up to 2016 are not fully comparable with later ones.^{7, 8}

Who holds the wealth

Net wealth is assets minus debts, including the own home and business assets. Pension rights are not counted. There are 8,258,900 households in all, 2,380,800 of them with a main earner aged 65 or over. CBS writes the age groups as “65 tot 75 jaar”, which we show as 65 to 74.

Pension rights come on top. CBS does not count pension entitlements as household wealth, so the rights Dutch retirees hold in work pension funds are not in these figures.²

• Heirs declare less than is left. In 2022, 274,000 heirs declared inheritances worth €21.8 billion and paid €2.4 billion of inheritance tax. Nearly 170,000 people died that year and left €28.5 billion. Declarations cover about 75% of the value of estates.⁸
• A few large estates. The average person who died in 2023 left €199,000, but the median was €45,200.⁷
• Fewer heirs per estate. An estate was shared by 2.3 heirs on average in 2023, against 3.2 in 2011.¹⁵
• A small tax take. Inheritance and gift tax together raised €3.4 billion in 2024, 0.8% of all tax and premium revenue.⁸

The next ten years. There is no official ten-year forecast. The only estimate we found is by Prof. Paul de Beer, reported in the press: baby boomers who die in the next ten years will leave about €230–240 billion (about US$260–271 billion, our conversion). His method was not published there.^{17, 6} ESB counts €491 billion held by 1.34 million households aged 75 and over. CBS's own table gives €459.1 billion for 1.154 million such households on 1 January 2024 (our sum). The gap is probably a different year or definition (our reading).^{15, 1} No source estimates how much of this is spent abroad.

2Homes and businesses changing hands

Most older Dutch homeowners still carry some mortgage, but their homes hold a large amount of equity. Many business owners want to stop within ten years. Homes and firms change hands mostly inside the Netherlands.^{1, 18}

• Owners aged 65+1.40Mhouseholds: 58.8% of all households aged 65 and over, 1 January 2024 (our calculation)¹
• Home equity, 65+€548bnHomes worth €662.8 billion minus €114.5 billion of mortgages; about €391,800 per owner (our calculation)¹
• Mortgage-free, 65+36%of owners aged 65 and over, about 508,300 households (our calculation)¹
• Median home, 65+€418,400Value of the homes owned by households aged 65 and over, 1 January 2024¹

Equity is not cash until a home is sold, and most of it stays in the Netherlands. At the 2025 average rate the equity is about US$619.6 billion (our conversion).^{1, 6}

• Most still have a mortgage. 891,300 households aged 65 and over still owe money on their own home: €128,400 on average, €100,000 at the median.¹
• Family houses. More than half of people aged 55 and over live in a single-family house they own.¹⁹
• Moving means downsizing. Owners aged 85 and over have 97 m² per person on average. Those who moved recently and own their home have 58 m² (data for 1 January 2023).¹⁹
• Business wealth. Households aged 55 and over hold about €366.2 billion in their own firms and in substantial company shareholdings (our sum), about US$413.8 billion (our conversion).^{1, 6}

Business owners near retirement

Do not add these rows: the surveys use different samples and definitions, and they count owners' plans, not completed sales. The ABN AMRO release gives no fieldwork dates, and the 500,000 figure comes from a trade outlet only.

Owners who sell turn a business into cash at the age when they decide where to retire. Most of them will stay in the Netherlands.

3Ageing: people aged 65 and over, now and in 2035

CBS projects 793,000 more people aged 65 and over in ten years, almost one in four of the population. CBS and the UN differ a little on how fast.^{9, 10, 24}

• Aged 65+, 1 Jan 20253.76M20.8% of 18.04 million people (our calculation)¹⁰
• Aged 65+, 1 Jan 20354.55M24.2% of the population (CBS projection); 95% range 4.31 to 4.73 million⁹
• Aged 80+, mid-20351.40Mup from 949,300 in mid-2025 (UN medium variant, our sums)²⁴
• AOW recipients3.74Mpeople receiving the state pension at the end of June 2026: 78,569 more than a year earlier²⁵

Changes are our calculations. CBS counts people on 1 January and the UN on 1 July, and they use different assumptions. CBS's actual count for 1 January 2026 is 3,833,508 (21.1%), slightly below its projection of 3,835,262.¹⁰

More deaths, more estates. Registered deaths were 173,494 in 2025, and CBS projects 189,745 deaths in 2035, so the number of estates will grow too (our reading).^{10, 9}

More older people does not mean more movers to the DR. The next section shows where Dutch pensioners abroad actually live.

4Retirees abroad from the Netherlands

About 340,000 people abroad receive the Dutch state pension (AOW), about as many as in 2015. Most of them lived or worked outside the Netherlands for part of their adult lives. Most participants in a large survey of Dutch retirement migrants lived in France and Spain, and very few Dutch pensioners live in the Dominican Republic.^{25, 26, 27, 4}

A reduced AOW usually means the person was not insured in the Netherlands for all their adult years, for example because they lived or worked abroad or came to the Netherlands later in life. People who leave the Netherlands before AOW age can also end up with a reduced AOW, so the full-AOW group is only a rough ceiling for people who lived their whole adult life in the Netherlands and then left (our reading).

Who is leaving, and where they go

• More older people are leaving. Emigration of people aged 65 and over rose from 3,938 in 2020 to 6,940 in 2025 (our sums). People born in the Netherlands made up 3,183 of them, up from 1,709 (+86%, our calculation). The count includes non-Dutch people and administrative corrections.³⁰
• A quarter go to Spain. Of 9,687 emigrants aged 50 and over born in the Netherlands in 2025, 2,539 went to Spain (26%, our calculation). Portugal took 467, Curaçao 202, Thailand 186 and the Caribbean Netherlands 148. The DR took 8.³
• A rough count of Dutch retirement migrants. NIDI roughly estimated about 24,000 in 2020: people who left late in their careers after at least 35 years in the Netherlands. Most of its survey participants lived in France and Spain, and they left at 62 on average.^{27, 31}
• Most do not plan to return. Three in four think they will certainly or probably not return. Health is the main reason for moving back (59%).³²
• Where the DR fits. The pension figures, the emigration figures and the survey all point to Europe and the Dutch Caribbean. The DR is a very small destination for Dutch retirees.

The Dutch Caribbean: the nearer alternative

Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten are countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba form the Caribbean Netherlands. In 2023 the AOW went to 5,830 people in Curaçao, 2,596 in Aruba, 748 on Bonaire and 322 in Sint Maarten, against 185 in the DR.⁴ In 2025, 568 people aged 50 and over emigrated to Curaçao and 203 to the Caribbean Netherlands, against 47 to the DR. Bonaire received 100 immigrants aged 65 and over that year (our sum).^{3, 33}

These islands appear on the Dutch list of tax treaty countries; the DR does not. SVB still treats the Caribbean part of the Kingdom as living abroad for the AOW.^{14, 34}

5The Dominican Republic connection

Visitors from the Netherlands come all year, and three in four land at Punta Cana. Few settle: about 140 residencies a year go to Dutch citizens.^{35, 5}

• Air arrivals, 202525,262trips by foreign visitors living in the Netherlands; 30,370 in 2022¹¹
• Residencies, 2025136granted to Dutch citizens, all types; 155 in 2018⁵
• AOW paid in the DR185people in 2023, paid €1.044 million that year; 80 in 2011^{4, 28}
• Flights from NL, 2025109commercial flights: 106 charter and 3 scheduled, about two a week (our calculation)³⁶

Fewer visitors than in 2022, but 2026 is up. The central bank counted 25,262 air arrivals of foreign visitors living in the Netherlands in 2025, 17% fewer than in 2022 (our calculation). January to July 2026 is 8.6% ahead of a year earlier (15,556 against 14,320), and the Tourism Ministry's January to August figures are 8.2% ahead (our calculations).^{11, 35} The Netherlands ranks 23rd among visitors' countries of residence, not counting the file's row for all other countries, and 9th in Europe.³⁵

Dominicans in the Netherlands. Another 4,665 arrivals in 2025 were Dominicans living in the Netherlands. CBS counts 18,997 people of Dominican origin living in the Netherlands on 1 January 2026, 11,507 of them born abroad.^{35, 37}

Settling: about 140 residencies a year

In 2025, 136 residencies went to Dutch citizens: 7 definitive, 38 permanent and 91 temporary. That puts the Netherlands 25th among all nationalities, with about 3.1% of the 4,348 residencies granted to EU citizens (our calculation). Across all nationalities, residencies rose from 19,698 in 2018 to 34,778 in 2025, mainly to Haitian and Venezuelan citizens (our sums).⁵

Entries by Dutch passport holders. DR airports recorded 49,798 entries by Dutch nationals in 2025, about the same as the 47,394 of 2018 (+5.1%, our calculation). January to August 2026 is 5.5% ahead. These are entries, not people, and they can include Dutch nationals who live in Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten or the DR, and Dutch-Dominican dual nationals.³⁸

In April 2015 the DR had 112 AOW recipients. It was one of seven countries without an AOW treaty that had more than 100, alongside Brazil (782), Malaysia (197), Mexico (179), Singapore (149), Colombia (122) and Costa Rica (108).⁴⁰ The AOW is only the state pension; we found no figure for Dutch work pensions paid to DR residents.

How many Dutch-born people live in the DR? The UN models 666 residents born in the Netherlands in mid-2024 (706 in 2000), plus 180 born in Aruba. It is a modelled count by country of birth, not a count of Dutch citizens, and says nothing about retirees. We found no Dutch government estimate.⁴¹

This is not an expat cost-of-living index: imported goods, beachfront rents and private health care cost much more than the average basket. Health spending per person was US$6,372 in the Netherlands and US$489 in the DR in 2023, about 13 times as much (our calculation); that measures spending, not the price or quality of the same treatment.^{42, 43}

Getting there

Amsterdam passengers can include travellers who live in other countries. The files do not name airlines or explain the 2026 rise.

Wikipedia's page on Punta Cana airport lists TUI fly Netherlands with flights to Amsterdam and to Willemstad (Curaçao); its list of KLM destinations has no DR route. These are secondary listings, not airline timetables.⁴⁵

6What it means for DR businesses serving people from the Netherlands

What the figures mean for a Dominican business serving people from the Netherlands.

• Speak Dutch, and know the Dutch paperwork

  A Dutch mover's AOW, work pension, tax and health papers all come from Dutch offices, such as the SVB, pension funds and the tax office. A business that can explain them in Dutch removes a hard step. Most Dutch visitors arrive through Punta Cana, and some through Santo Domingo.³⁵

• Health cover comes first

  The DR is not on the Dutch list of health-care treaty countries, so the scheme that keeps Dutch-funded care for people living abroad does not apply there.¹³ The Dutch tax office says that after emigrating, people stay in the Dutch national insurances only in a few listed cases, all linked to working in the Netherlands. Otherwise the insurance ends, and with it the right to Dutch long-term care (Wlz).⁴⁶ So a pensioner moving from the Netherlands will need private or local cover in the DR (our reading), ideally explained in Dutch.

• Explain the AOW for single people

  The AOW can be paid anywhere, but without a treaty only at the cohabiting rate: 50% of the net minimum wage, not the 70% a single person gets, as the rule was described in 2016. The DR has no such treaty, and talks never started: in 2017 the minister reported that none of the countries given a draft treaty, the DR among them, had replied positively.^{12, 47} From 1 July 2026 the full cohabiting rate is €1,139.39 gross a month for residents of the Netherlands, about US$1,287 (our conversion). SVB publishes these amounts for residents; the amount paid abroad can differ.^{48, 6}

• The services they need

  The needs that follow from Dutch rules:

  • Insurers and clinics: private or local health and care cover, because Dutch treaty cover does not reach the DR.¹³
  • Tax advisers and lawyers: there is no Dutch tax treaty with the DR, and without one the Netherlands has the right to tax. That needs a Dutch tax adviser and a Dominican lawyer.¹⁴
  • Residency lawyers: as written in 2007, Law 171-07 sets US$1,500 a month for a pensioner and US$2,000 for a rentista, plus US$250 per dependant. The gross AOW at the cohabiting rate alone, about US$1,287 a month (our conversion), is below US$1,500; work pensions are separate income. According to a press summary, under the 2026 tax law (Law 30-26) taxpayers cannot use more than one incentive regime at the same time for the same economic activity, investment or operation. A Dominican lawyer must confirm the current rules.^{49, 50, 48}
  • Banks and currency help: the AOW is set in euros, so exchange-rate swings fall on the pensioner.⁴⁸
  • Property managers: Dutch visitors come all year, with a peak in July, so rentals are not only a winter business.³⁵

• Plan for the whole year

  Only about half of 2025 arrivals from the Netherlands came in the months November to April (50.2%, our calculation), and July was the busiest month. Charter flights ran 8 or 9 times a month all year.^{35, 36} Staff, marketing and rental calendars can follow that rhythm.

• Stay honest about the size

  About 140 residencies a year go to Dutch citizens, of every type, and far more older Dutch emigrants choose Spain or the Dutch Caribbean.^{5, 3, 4} Most Dutch wealth stays in the Netherlands. The opportunity is to be found early, in Dutch, by the few who choose the DR. Retire.do puts a business's listing next to its guides and move plan. It cannot promise customers, and the site has no traffic figures yet.

7Risks and caveats

• Wealth in the Netherlands is not money in the DR. No source estimates how much Dutch wealth, home equity or business-sale money is spent abroad, let alone in the Dominican Republic. Most of it stays in the Netherlands.
• Provisional, nominal figures. CBS's 2024 wealth figures and 2023 estates are provisional, the growth figures are in current euros (not adjusted for inflation), and CBS says estate figures up to 2016 are not fully comparable with later years.^{1, 7}
• Pension rights are left out. CBS household wealth does not count pension entitlements. We found no figure for Dutch work pensions paid to DR residents.²
• No official ten-year forecast. The €230–240 billion figure is one professor's estimate, reported second-hand without a method. ESB's €491 billion and CBS's €459.1 billion for households aged 75 and over differ, probably by year or definition (our reading).^{17, 15, 1}
• Plans, not sales. Business-succession figures are owners' plans from surveys with different samples. The ABN AMRO release gives no fieldwork dates, and the 500,000 figure comes from a trade outlet only.^{20, 18, 22}
• Pensions, not Dutch retirees. Most AOW paid abroad goes to people who lived or worked outside the Netherlands for part of their lives. The DR series counts people at 31 December up to 2021 and people paid during the year for 2022 and 2023, and we found no DR figure after 2023.^{25, 28, 4}
• Different migration tables. CBS emigration tables differ in definition (one includes administrative corrections, one does not), and by destination they give only “50 and over”, not 65 and over. NIDI calls its 24,000 a rough estimate.^{30, 3, 27}
• Arrivals are trips, not people. Repeat visitors count each time, and the central bank's method changed in 2021, so compare 2022 onwards. For 2025 the central bank's file gives 25,261.7 arrivals (25,262 here) and the Tourism Ministry's monthly figures add up to 25,261.^{11, 35}
• Entries and residencies mix groups. DR migration figures for Dutch nationals can include people who live in Aruba, Curaçao or Sint Maarten and Dutch-Dominican dual nationals. The residency file covers every type (work, family, investment, pensioner) and does not say whether renewals are included. Across all nationalities, residencies rose from 19,698 in 2018 to 34,778 in 2025, mainly to Haitian and Venezuelan citizens (our sums).^{38, 5}
• Modelled resident count. The UN's 666 residents born in the Netherlands is a model, not a count of Dutch citizens. The DR's 2022 census was not opened for this report.⁴¹
• Old treaty evidence. The DR's AOW status rests on ministerial letters from 2015 to 2017 and SVB's 2023 table, which lists the DR among countries without a treaty. A 2016 letter says the DR had at first wanted to start talks; by December 2017 it had not confirmed. We found no newer statement.^{12, 47, 4}
• Law and tax are not advice here. Law 171-07 (as written in 2007), Law 30-26 (known here only from a press summary), Dutch tax on income paid abroad and health cover all need a Dominican lawyer and a Dutch tax adviser.^{49, 50, 14}
• Safety. The Dutch government's travel advice for the DR has colour code yellow for the whole country: travel is possible, but there are special safety risks. It warns of theft and robbery, often with knives or firearms, especially around resorts and in cities; of frequent armed robberies near the closed border with Haiti; of storms and hurricanes from June to November; and of many road deaths (advice changed 10 June 2026, still valid on 25 September 2026).⁵¹
• Flights change. The airline listing comes from Wikipedia, not timetables, and the files do not explain the 2026 rise in passengers from Amsterdam.^{45, 44}
• Currency. The AOW is set in euros, so exchange-rate swings fall on the pensioner. US$ figures here use the 2025 average of US$1.12998 per euro.⁶

8Sources

Figures were checked against the original publications. Where only press coverage could be read, the source line says so. “Our calculation” means we derived the figure from published numbers; the publisher did not print it.