Technical article

What a Dutch State Pension Pays Someone Who Arrives at 60

They have heard that the Dutch have a state pension for everyone, and they wonder whether it will help pay their bills.

By Neil Solomon · 3 min read

Picture a couple named Grace and Tom. Both are 60 and moving to the Netherlands. They have heard that the Dutch have a state pension for everyone, and they wonder whether it will help pay their bills. The honest first step is to see how it is built.

How the amount is set

The Dutch government explains that the full state pension follows the minimum wage, and it is adjusted every half year. Two quotes from the government page:

• "Als u alleen woont krijgt u 70% van het minimumloon." If you live alone, you get 70% of the minimum wage.
• "Als u in 1 huis woont met uw partner krijgt u 50% van het minimumloon." If you share a home with a partner, you get 50% of the minimum wage. This is the amount for each of you.

Then comes the part that matters most to a late arrival. The same page says: "Voor elk jaar waarin u niet in Nederland heeft gewoond krijgt u 2% minder AOW." For each year you did not live in the Netherlands, your pension is 2% lower. The English translation is mine.

What the amounts are

The Dutch Social Insurance Bank (SVB) publishes the amounts for people who live in the Netherlands, and changes them every half year. The page I read on 11 October 2026 shows the amounts from 1 July 2026.

The net column deducts the health insurance contribution of 4.85% and uses the payroll tax credit; without the credit the single net amount on the same page is EUR 1,285.22. The holiday allowance is paid in May.

The pension age

The Dutch government page "AOW-leeftijd 2025-2031" lists the pension age as 67 for 2025, 2026 and 2027, and 67 years and 3 months for 2028 to 2031. The page shows "last changed 28 August 2026". It does not list ages by birth date, and the Social Insurance Bank has a tool for that. A person who is 60 today would reach the age after 2031, and no official figure for those years was found. https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/algemene-ouderdomswet-aow/aow-leeftijd

My arithmetic on the build-up

Two percent of the July 2026 single figure is about EUR 33.24 a month. Two percent of the partner figure is about EUR 22.79 a month. So each year counted adds roughly those amounts. Five years counted would be about EUR 166 a month for a single person, and about EUR 114 for each partner. This is my arithmetic from the July 2026 figures, and it holds only if the 2% rule applies the way I have read it for a person who arrives at 60. The pension is built up for each year you are insured, so a person who arrives at 60 and stays builds a small amount each year until the pension age.

What this article leaves for another day

• The year-by-year count for a person who moves in at 60. The government page explains the cut for years away; the SVB gives each person a statement of the years that count.
• How the pension is taxed for a person from the US. That depends on a tax treaty and on your own situation.