neighbourhood in Westerwolde
Blijham
1,975 residents · postal code 9697 · Part of Blijham, Westerwolde
Plenty of space, less prosperity
Blijham is quiet and green — an 8.4 for quiet & nature, with more than two thirds greenery within three hundred metres, tree canopy above the national middle and noise below it, at a density of under nine hundred residents per square kilometre. Four components of that pillar point the same way.
The wealth & income pillar does the reverse at 3.2, and property value is the main cause: it stands at just over sixty per cent of the national median. Social assistance is more than twice the national rate and fewer households than usual are in the top income group; only vacancy sits exactly on the middle. What keeps the families pillar at 5.0 is not distance, since shop, GP and school are all six hundred metres away, but the population: nearly four in ten residents are 65 or over and a quarter of households have children.
- no. 6,171 of 13,075 neighbourhoods with a grade
- no. 4 of 57 in Westerwolde
How Blijham scores
Do some of these matter more to you than others?
Is Blijham a safe neighbourhood?
For 2025, Blijham comes out at 15 recorded crimes per 1,000 people present; the national middle is 24. That is low: Blijham is among the 20% of Dutch neighbourhoods with the fewest recorded crimes.
The figures ⌄Safety
Registered crimes per 1,000 people present per year: residents plus business activity. Figures for small neighbourhoods are smoothed.
In 2025, 29 crimes were recorded here. The figures above are per 1,000 people present (residents + businesses).
Tick = Dutch median
The safest neighbourhoods in Westerwolde →The most dangerous neighbourhoods in Westerwolde →
The figures ⌄Amenities
Average distance to everyday amenities, compared with the Dutch median.
Tick = Dutch median
The figures ⌄Wealth & income
What the homes are worth, what residents earn and how many homes stand empty. It describes the area, not the people living in it.
Not counted
Part of this score's subject, but not part of the grade.
Tick = Dutch median
The figures ⌄Quiet & nature
How tightly the addresses sit together, how much noise there is, and how much green, trees and water surround it.
Not counted
Part of this score's subject, but not part of the grade.
Not part of the grade: air quality varies mostly between regions, barely between neighbourhoods within one municipality. WHO guideline: 5 µg/m³. Calculated annual mean, RIVM 2024.
Tick = Dutch median
The figures ⌄Families
How practical this area is with children: distance to school and childcare, and how many children already live here.
Tick = Dutch median
Who lives here
Blijham has strikingly many residents aged 65 and over: 39%, against 22% in the average Dutch neighbourhood.
Age profile
- 0–1510%
NL median 14%
- 15–258%
NL median 11%
- 25–4515%
NL median 22%
- 45–6527%
NL median 28%
- 65+39%
NL median 22%
Share of residents per age group (CBS, 2025). All five bars share one scale, so their lengths can be compared with each other.
Average household size
2.0 — smaller than average
NL median 2.3
Single-person households
35% — more than average
NL median 31%
Households with children
26% — fewer than average
NL median 35%
Residents per km²
841 — far less densely populated than average
NL median 2,364
Tick = Dutch median. Households with children counts towards Families, population density towards Quiet & nature; the other figures here get no grade.
Frequently asked questions
Is Blijham a safe neighbourhood?
For 2025, Blijham comes out at 15 recorded crimes per 1,000 people present; the national middle is 24. That is low: Blijham is among the 20% of Dutch neighbourhoods with the fewest recorded crimes. The figure is about what the police record, not about the people who live there.
How much crime is there in Blijham?
In Blijham the police recorded 29 crimes in 2025: theft, burglary, violence and vandalism combined. The comparison figure above (15 per 1,000) is not simply that count divided by the number of residents: we count residents plus workplaces, so a shopping street or station is not unfairly penalised, and for small counts we pull the figure towards the national average — otherwise a single incident would make a small neighbourhood look unsafe.
How is the grade for Blijham calculated?
Blijham scores 6.5 as its total score. That grade is a national position: we weigh five equally heavy scores — safety, amenities, wealth & income, quiet & nature and families — and see where Blijham lands among every neighbourhood in the Netherlands. So it is not the mean of the five grades, but a place in the queue. All from open data published by CBS and the police.
The best and worst neighbourhoods of Westerwolde
Same total grade, same yardstick — from the top to the bottom of Westerwolde.
Highest grades
Lowest grades
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