WLO 2025, four futures for the Netherlands to 2060

3 July 2025

PBL and CPB published the Toekomstverkenning Welvaart en Leefomgeving 2025, the scenario study that Dutch policy appraisal leans on. Four futures, built by crossing two rates of economic growth with two speeds of climate transition, running to 2060. The spread is wide: 21.9 million inhabitants in the high-growth case against 18.2 million in the low one, with the difference concentrated in the Randstad and the provinces around it.

A national number is not yet a policy question. Where those people live, how much space their housing and work take, and what that leaves for everything else is, and that is the part our models are for. The study has a separate cahier on regional development and urbanisation for exactly that reason.

The WLO is the reference set for social cost-benefit analyses, which means these scenarios end up under a great many later decisions. That is a good argument for the method being public and reproducible, which is the position we have taken about our own models for years. See land use and spatial planning.