Early Life
Jan Pronk was born in Scheveningen in the Netherlands on March 16, 1940. He is the son of Johannes Pronk (1909–2005) and Elisabeth Hendrika van Geel, who were both school teachers at the Protestant elementary school Koningin Emmaschool in Scheveningen. Jan Pronk attended the Koningin Emmaschool for three years. He attended the Protestant secondary school Zandvliet Lyceum in the Hague, where he graduated the gymnasium in 1958 with a curriculum that focused on exact sciences.
Jan Pronk continued to study economics at the Nederlandse Economische hogeschool (currently Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics) in Rotterdam, graduating in 1964. As a student, he worked as a guide on the Henri Dunant, the Dutch Red Cross's holiday ship for the disabled. He was a member of the Christian-Historical Youth Organisation, the youth organisation of the conservative Protestant Christian Historical Union party and president of the Protestant fraternity S.S.R.
In 1965 Pronk became research-assistant of professor Jan Tinbergen, the future Nobel Prize laureate, at the Centre for Development Planning and later he became associate professor at the Dutch Economic Institute. In this period he also became an active member of the social-democratic PvdA, between 1966 and 1971 he was chairman of the Krimpen aan de Lek-branch of the party. He became active in the development cooperation-movement, serving as chairman of the "X-Y"-movement: an alternative Dutch development cooperation fund.
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