Country comparison: Switzerland / Netherlands

This country comparison is a concise, tabular overview of numerous data from our respective country pages for Switzerland and Netherlands. There, we provide many explanations and details per country that go far beyond this comparison.

General information

	Switzerland	Netherlands
Region:	Western Europe	Western Europe
Area:	41,290 km²	41,543 km²
National language:	German	Dutch
Government form:	Federal republic	Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Independent since:	1499 AD	1648 AD
Capital:	Bern	Amsterdam

Population

Details for Switzerland and the Netherlands

	Switzerland	Netherlands
Population:	8,703,000	17,533,000
Inhabitants/km²:	210.8	422.0
Life expectancy males:	Ø 81 years	Ø 80 years
Life expectancy females:	Ø 85 years	Ø 83 years
Average age:	Ø 42.7 years	Ø 42.8 years
Birth rate:	9.90 ‰	9.70 ‰
Death rate:	8.80 ‰	9.70 ‰
Migrationrate:	4.52 ‰	1.90 ‰

Quality of life

Values from 0 (bad) to 100 (very good)
See also: Explanations and country ranking on quality of life

	Switzerland	Netherlands
Political stability:	91	86
Civil rights:	99	99
Health:	93	84
Climate:	35	21
Cost of Living:	44	40
Popularity:	40	36

Economy

Details for Switzerland and the Netherlands

	Switzerland	Netherlands
Currency:	Swiss franc (1 CHF = 100 Rappen)	euro (1 EUR =100 Cent)
Unemployment rate:	5.3 %	4.0 %
Inflation rate:	0.58 %	2.68 %
Cost of Living: (USA = 100%)	142.40 %	99.04 %
Commercial taxes and contributions:	28.80 %	41.20 %
Average income:	90,600 US$	55,200 US$
Corruption index:	18 (good)	20 (good)

	CHE: total	per 1000 inh.	NLD: total	per 1000 inh.
Gross domestic product:	800,640 M US$	91.99 M US$	1,012,847 M US$	57.77 M US$
Gross national product:	788,512 M US$	90.60 M US$	967,837 M US$	55.20 M US$
Exported goods:	571,376 M US$	65.65 M US$	839,646 M US$	47.89 M US$
Imported goods:	480,522 M US$	55.21 M US$	735,748 M US$	41.96 M US$

Infrastructure

Details for Switzerland and the Netherlands

	CHE: total	per 1000 inh.	NLD: total	per 1000 inh.
Roadways:	71,557 km	8.22 km	139,124 km	7.93 km
Railways:	3,236 km	0.37 km	3,058 km	0.17 km
Waterways:	1,292 km	0.15 km	6,237 km	0.36 km
Harbours:	20	0.0023	1,199	0.0684
Passenger airports:	5	0.0006	5	0.0003

Energy balance

Details for Switzerland and the Netherlands

	CHE: total	per 1000 inh.	NLD: total	per 1000 inh.
Energy consumption:	58.46 bn kWh	6.72 m kWh	108.80 bn kWh	6.21 m kWh
Energy production:	59.01 bn kWh	6.78 m kWh	109.30 bn kWh	6.23 m kWh
Energy export:	30.17 bn kWh	3.47 m kWh	19.34 bn kWh	1.10 m kWh
Energy imports:	34.10 bn kWh	3.92 m kWh	24.26 bn kWh	1.38 m kWh
CO2 emissions:	37.38 m t	4,294.87 t	146.34 m t	8,346.53 t

Telecommunication

Details for Switzerland and the Netherlands

	Switzerland	Netherlands
International dialing:	+41	+31
Internet domain:	.ch	.nl

	CHE total	CHE per 1000 inh.	NLD total	NLD per 1000 inh.
Landlines:	2,956,500	340	5,024,000	287
Mobile cellulars:	11,060,700	1271	21,888,000	1248
Internet server:	5,301,000	609	13,699,000	781
Internet users:	8,317,789	956	16,139,690	921
Broadband Internet:	4,007,000	460	7,615,000	434

Healthcare system

Details for Switzerland and the Netherlands

	Switzerland	Netherlands
Hospital beds per 1000 inh.:	4.63	3.17
Physicians per 1000 inh.:	4.24	3.51
Diabetes:	5.7 %	5.4 %
HIV:	0.05 %	0.02 %
Tuberculosis:	0.05 ‰	0.04 ‰
Tuberculosis cure rate:	74.0 %	83.0 %
Smokers:	25.5 %	22.2 %

Climate

We also provide a more detailed climate comparison of both countries.
The data for each country can be found here: Switzerland and Netherlands

	Switzerland	Netherlands
Daytime temperatures:	15.3 °C	14.4 °C
Nighttime temperatures:	6.5 °C	6.9 °C
Rel. humidity:	76 %	80 %
Rain days:	9.5	10.7
Sunshine hours per day:	5.3	4.9

Native languages

	Switzerland	Netherlands
Dutch:	n/a	95.6 %
German:	62.5 %	n/a
French:	21.3 %	n/a
Italian:	8.3 %	n/a
Fries:	n/a	3.7 %
Croatian:	1.4 %	n/a
Albanian:	1.3 %	n/a
Portuguese:	1.2 %	n/a
Spanish:	1.1 %	n/a
Arabic:	n/a	0.9 %
Turkish:	n/a	0.8 %
Romansh:	0.5 %	n/a
other:	2.4 %	-1.0 %

Religions

	Switzerland	Netherlands
Christianity:	70.8 %	47.0 %
Nondenominational:	21.4 %	42.0 %
Islam:	4.9 %	5.0 %
Jewry:	0.2 %	0.2 %
other:	2.7 %	5.8 %

Data inventory and updates

A country comparison like this can be based on several hundred individual data items from dozens of different sources. All data are based on the most recent data available to us. Most of them refer to the previous year and are updated around March of the following year. If a country has not yet published data for the most recent or penultimate year, we present the most recent official data. Updates are made on an ongoing basis depending on the subject area or source, so there is no single "cutoff date" for this comparison. Sources for almost all data can be found on our respective country pages.

Switzerland	Netherlands
All information: Switzerland	All information: Netherlands
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