Beaconsfield is lived in by middle-aged graduates who own their homes, most of them in couples and most of them well. Seven in ten households own. More than half the adults have a degree. The typical resident is in their mid-forties. The town did its growing up some time ago and has no plans to repeat it.
At the 2021 census, which is the source for the population figures here, about 72% of Beaconsfield's households owned their home, about 15% rented privately and about 12% rented from the council or a housing association. That social share is larger than the gravel drives would lead anyone to expect, and it means the town is a little more mixed than its reputation.
The median resident is 46, and only about 20% of residents are aged 25 to 44, the years when most people are starting careers and first homes. Those years mostly happen somewhere cheaper, and the people who arrive here tend to come later, with more behind them.
The Office for National Statistics models median household income across Beaconsfield's three middle-layer areas at around £79,000 a year before tax, for the financial year to March 2023. It is a modelled figure for a year that has passed, and it is gross, so the amount any household takes home is a good deal smaller. It is comfortable money, though in a town of million-pound houses it buys a seat at the table and not much more.
About 27% of households are couples with dependent children and about 8% are lone parents. About 25% of households are one person living alone, and within that, about 14% of all households are a pensioner living alone. Family houses with the school run going on outside sit beside bungalows and flats where someone has stayed on after the family left, and both are a large part of the town.
About 56% of adult residents hold a degree-level qualification, about 10% have no formal qualifications, and only about 2% are full-time students. Beaconsfield has plenty of graduates and almost nobody currently studying, because the university years were spent elsewhere and the town is where the graduates ended up.
About 88% of residents described their health as good or very good at the census, and about 3% as bad or very bad. Across Buckinghamshire as a whole, the rate of deaths from preventable causes is better than the England average, and the county's smoking rate, about 8% of adults, is also better than England's. Those are county figures, but they fit a town of healthy, employed, well-qualified people.
The people are one of Beaconsfield's real strengths: owners and graduates in good health, with enough social renting and enough pensioners living alone to keep the place more varied than its reputation suggests.