Mostly people in their forties who own their homes and work in offices. Seven in ten own. Half have a degree. Nearly nine in ten describe their health as good. Students are hard to find. Beckenham is where a London career goes to buy a lawnmower.
About 68% of Beckenham's households own their home outright or with a mortgage. About 22% rent privately and 10% from a social landlord. Owning is the norm, and the renters are a large enough minority to keep the letting market busy without changing what kind of town this is.
All the population figures here come from the 2021 census, which counted about 53,000 residents. The median age is 42, and about 29% of residents are between 25 and 44. That's old enough to have a pension and young enough to still be paying off the loft conversion.
The Office for National Statistics models average household income in Beckenham at about £88,000 before tax for the financial year to March 2023, or about £57,000 once tax is taken off. The gross figure is the one people quote, and the net figure is the one that pays for a semi at Beckenham prices.
About 31% of households are one person living alone, and that includes the 13% who are pensioners living alone. Couples with dependent children make up about 22% of households and lone parents about 10%. Beckenham is a family suburb with a large population of people living on their own, and the town's flats explain a good part of the second.
About 50% of adults hold a degree-level qualification, about 11% have no qualifications, and about 2% are full-time students. Beckenham's young adults mostly study somewhere else and come back later with a deposit.
About 87% of residents describe their health as good or very good. Across the London Borough of Bromley, about 7% of adults smoke, better than the England average, and preventable deaths also come in better than England. Those two are borough-wide figures with an England benchmark, so they describe Bromley as a whole and not Beckenham's own streets.
Beckenham's population is comfortably above average: well qualified, mostly in good health and mostly owning their homes. The main thing most of them worry about is the mortgage.