The population of Amsterdam is set to hit one million by the mid 2030s, according to new calculations by national statistics office CBS and the environmental assessment agency PBL.

The Dutch capital currently has 840,000 residents, but immigration and the depopulation of rural areas will make it the Netherlands’ first million person city within the next 20 years, the agencies say.

‘Youngsters are being drawn to the cities and when they have children, they stay there or move to the suburbs. They don’t go back to their villages,’ CBS spokesman Jan Latten said.

At the turn of the 21st century, 12.6% of the population lived in the big four cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague. That proportion now stands at 13.6% and will reach 14.6% by 2030.

By contrast, the population of towns with fewer than 100,000 people has shrunk by an average of 2% since 2000. One in four small-town residents is now a pensioner, compared with 14% in 2000.

The total population of the Netherlands will rise by 950,000 to 18 million by 2030, the CBS predicts.