The centre of economic gravity is moving from the advanced to the large emerging economies, particularly Brazil, China and India. For many years, OECD countries accounted for around 70% of global GDP. Today, this share has shrunk to around 60% and it is set to fall further.

This spotlight report draws upon the OECD report Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools.

This note is taken from Chapter 2 of Economic Policy Reforms: Going for Growth 2012.

Gains in female education attainment have contributed to a worldwide increase in women’s participation in the labour force, but considerable gaps remain in working hours, conditions of employment and earnings.  More specific data for the Netherlands are available in this country note.

The Netherlands is failing to vigorously pursue foreign bribery allegations and must do more to enforce its foreign bribery laws. Fourteen out of 22 foreign bribery allegations have not triggered the opening of an investigation, calling into question the Netherlands’ ability and proactivity in investigating and prosecuting this crime.

The Secretary-General, Mr. Angel Gurría, will visit The Netherlands on 13th and 14th of March 2013, to attend the 2013 International Summit on the Teaching Profession. He will also go to The Hague and hold a bilateral meeting with Mr. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Finance Minister.

This paper discusses the results of the 2011-2012 OECD LEED study of measuring green growth in the Benelux countries (Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg). The study paid particular attention to the challenges of measuring the transition to a low-carbon economy in cross-border areas as they have additional levels of complexity when it comes to measuring and monitoring their low-carbon transition.

Education at a Glance 2013 - Country notes and key fact tables

The global economic crisis has had a profound impact on people’s well-being, reaching far beyond the loss of jobs and income, and affecting citizens’ satisfaction with their lives and their trust in governments, according to a new OECD report.

Two rounds of the Survey of Adult Skills are under way: Round 1 (2008-13) with 24 participating countries, whose results were released in October 2013, and Round 2 (2012-16) with 9 participating countries, whose results will be released in 2016. A third round is scheduled to begin in May 2014.

These country notes contain indicators which compare the political and institutional frameworks of national governments as well as revenues and expenditures, employment, and compensation. They include a description of government policies on integrity, e-government and open government.

The Netherlands is a global pioneer in water management with a long history of containing flood risks and reclaiming land from the sea. Yet it will need to adapt its water governance policies to meet the looming challenges of shifting demographics, regional development and climate change, according to an OECD report.

This note presents key findings for Netherlands from Society at a Glance 2014 - OECD Social indicators. This 2014 publication also provides a special chapter on: the crisis and its aftermath: a “stress test” for societies and for social policies.

Encouraging more people to work later in life would help the Netherlands meet its growing challenges of a rapidly ageing population and rising social spending, according to a new OECD report.

Mr. Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the OECD, visited The Hague on 23 and 24 April 2014 to present the 2014 Economic Survey of the Netherlands as well as the OECD Review of Innovation Policy and the Territorial Review of the country. During his stay, Mr. Gurría held bilateral meetings with HRH Queen Maxima, Prime Minister Mark Rutte, various members of the Dutch government, and business and trade union representatives.

The Netherlands is gradually emerging from a double-dip recession with strengthened public finances and reforms on track to improve the labour and housing markets and the health care and pension systems. These reforms are paying off, says the OECD. Growth is expected to reach 1% this year and 1.3% in 2015.

Country notes highlight some key findings from TALIS 2013 for individual countries and economies

The ability to measure innovation is essential to an improvement strategy in education. This country note analyses how the practices are changing within classrooms and educational organisations and how teachers develop and use their pedagogical resources.

Country notes with main key findings of the book and key fact tables: a customised snapshot of a country's educational environment, highlighting the most important issues in the educational landscape.

Vocational education and training (VET) programmes are facing rapid change and intensifying challenges. How can employers and unions be engaged? This country report on the Netherlands looks at these and other questions.

This publication highlights new evidence on policies to support job creation, bringing together the latest research on labour market, entrepreneurship and local economic development policy to help governments support job creation in the recovery. It also includes a set of country pages featuring, among other things, new data on skills supply and demand at the level of smaller OECD regions (TL3).

The Netherlands should increase support for workers suffering from mental health issues and their employers and tackle the continued social stigma and limited knowledge around such illnesses, according to a new OECD report.

The OECD Port-Cities Programme aims to identify how ports can be assets for urban development. The programme therefore assesses the impact of ports on cities and regions. It also compares policies aimed at increasing positive regional impacts of ports and limiting negative effects.

The tax burden in the Netherlands increased by 0.4 percentage points from 35.9% to 36.3% in 20121. The corresponding figure for the OECD average was an increase of 0.4 percentage points from 33.3% to 33.7%. The Dutch standard VAT rate is 21%, which is above the OECD average. The average VAT/GST standard rate in the OECD was 19.1% on 1 January 2014.

Mr. Angel Gurría was in The Hague to attend the High-Level Policy Forum on Mental Health and Work Policy Challenges in OECD Countries, where he presented key findings of the OECD Fit Mind Fit Job report and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Orange Nassau.

Water resources allocation determines who is able to use water resources, how, when and where. Capturing information from 27 OECD countries and key partner economies, the report presents key findings from the OECD Survey of Water Resources Allocation and case studies of successful allocation reform.

Mr. Gurría was in The Hague for the BIAC-TUAC Consultation with the Bureau of the upcoming 2015 OECD Ministerial Council Meeting.

This year’s OECD Ministerial Council Meeting, which we are honoured to chair, will address the issue of investment. The timing could not be better. Growth prospects have improved, but there is still a lot of work to be done. Investment has been hit especially hard since the crisis started and has yet to recover.

In January of this year I visited the Mexican state of Tabasco– a state crossed by rivers and facing the Gulf of Mexico. The state’s population has doubled over the past 30 years and its economy relies heavily on oil and natural gas resources. It has its challenges as well: unemployment, poverty and a lack of resources.

Opening address by Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the 2015 OECD Ministerial Council Meeting

Specific country notes have been prepared using data from the database OECD Health Statistics 2015, July 2015 version. The notes are available in PDF format.

The 2015 edition introduces more detailed analysis of participation in early childhood and tertiary levels of education. The report also examines first generation tertiary-educated adults’ educational and social mobility, labour market outcomes for recent graduates, and participation in employer-sponsored formal and/or non-formal education.

An early leader in environmental policy, the Netherlands has decoupled greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth and virtually eliminated landfilling over the past decade. Yet a very fossil fuel-intensive energy mix and looming pressures from traffic congestion and intensive farming are creating new challenges, according to a new OECD report.

The food and agricultural system in the Netherlands is innovative and export-oriented, with high value-added along the food chain and significant world export shares for many products. To maintain and build on this performance, government policy should increasingly focus on measures to boost innovation and improve sustainability performance, according to a new OECD report.

The Secretary-General opened the Netherlands-OECD Global Symposium on “Financial Resilience throughout Life” alongside Her Majesty Queen Máxima and held bilateral meetings with several Dutch authorities.

The Dutch school system is one of the best in the OECD, but raising standards will require further reforms to improve early childhood education, motivate students to excel and develop a career structure that attracts more high performers to the teaching profession, according to a new OECD report.

The labour market recovery in the Netherlands is lagging behind. As of the last quarter of 2015, the unemployment rate stood at 6.7%, just one percentage point lower than its cyclical peak and three percentage points higher from its level at the start of the global financial crisis. As a result of the sluggish recovery, the unemployment rate in the Netherlands is now slightly higher than that for the OECD as a whole.

The Netherlands should improve its policies to attract and retain highly skilled migrants in order to address labour shortages and strengthen its position as a knowledge-based economy, according to a new OECD report.

Education at a Glance 2016 - Country Notes

The number of young people not in employment, education or training (NEETs) remains elevated in many countries since the crisis. This country note examines the characteristics of those at risk of being NEET in the Netherlands along with policies to help meet the challenge. It also includes many new youth-specific indicators on family formation, self-sufficiency, income and poverty, health and social cohesion.

The Dutch education system and the skills of the Dutch population are very strong overall. But there are concerns that too many people in the Netherlands are not developing the “right” skills to succeed or taking sufficient responsibility for maintaining and further developing their skills in adulthood.

The Netherlands has responded to new global goals and challenges by integrating its aid, trade and investment agendas, and is an innovator in using aid flows to mobilise significant additional and responsible resources from the private sector, according to a new OECD report.

As part of continuing efforts to improve the international tax framework, the OECD has released the first analysis of individual country efforts to improve dispute resolution mechanisms.

This note presents selected country highlights from the OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2017 with a specific focus on digital trends among all themes covered.

Key findings for The Netherlands from the report "Pensions at a Glance 2017"

The Co-operative Research Programme (CRP)'s Call for Applications for conference sponsorship and research fellowships for funding in 2019 is now CLOSED. The CRP supports work on sustainable use of natural resources in agriculture, forests, fisheries and food production.

Mr. Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the OECD, will be in The Hague on 2 July 2018 to present the 2018 OECD Economic Survey of The Netherlands. While in The Hague, the Secretary-General will hold bilateral meetings with several Ministers and high-level officials of The Netherlands.

The Netherlands is experiencing vibrant economic activity, with gross domestic product (GDP) at about 8% above its pre-crisis peak and the unemployment rate below 4%. Growth picked up to above 3% in 2017, which was well above the euro area and OECD averages.

Economic performance in The Netherlands is vibrant and growth is expected to remain robust, underpinned by sound public finances, healthy job creation and high levels of confidence. The current economic expansion should be used to speed up implementation of reforms to ensure future stability and support more inclusive labour markets, according to a new report from the OECD.

Biographical note of the Permanent Representative of the Netherlands.