Education at home: the age-specific pattern of migration between the Netherlands and the former Dutch East Indies around 1930

The 1930 population census of the former Dutch East Indies (currently Indonesia) shows for the European population a striking shortage in the age range 10-20. This paper deals with the possible causes of this constriction in the age structure, in particular, the phenomenon of European children attending secondary education in the Netherlands. Using sample data from the city of The Hague, it is estimated that the proportion of students in the Netherlands born in the Dutch East Indies was about 3 per cent, implying that the teenager gap in the Dutch East Indies was for about half due to a cohort effect and for the other half due to the ‘education at home’ effect.