Average inflation rate just over 3 percent since 1900

The annual inflation rate in the Netherlands averaged 3.2 percent over the twentieth century. There were peaks and troughs in the past century. With 19.2 percent, the highest rate was recorded in 1918. In response to sharp price increases during the Great War caused by food and housing shortages, prices dropped (most significantly in 1921 by -13.4 percent). World wars and the oil crisis in the 1970s pushed up prices. The economic boom just after the First and Second World War and the subsequent depression in the 1930s clearly stand out.

Since the Great Depression of the 1930s, deflation (-0.5 percent) only occurred in 1987 due to plummeting oil prices. Extreme upward and downward price movements as in the period 1918–1950, have not occurred in the past decades. Since the introduction of the euro in 1999, annual inflation has averaged 2.3 percent.

Inflation