Berkhamsted is mostly settled, well-qualified homeowners in early middle age, with good incomes. Seven in ten own their home. About half have a degree. The typical resident is in their mid-forties. Most residents arrived with a career already under way, and few came here to start one.
Census 2021 is the source for the population figures on this page, and it counted 21,468 people in 9,028 households. About 73% of households own their home and about 14% rent privately. Social renting accounts for about 13%, almost as many as rent privately. That share of affordable housing is a part of the town the house prices don't advertise.
The typical resident is 44, and about 23% of people are aged 25 to 44. Berkhamsted has its share of young families, but it is a town of people who already got somewhere in their careers before they moved. The thirty-somethings have to buy their way in.
The Office for National Statistics models typical household income at about £77,500 a year before tax, for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the town's four middle-layer areas. That is a figure from before the most recent pay rounds and before income tax. Gross pay always sounds better over a dinner party than it does once it lands in the bank.
By household type, about 29% of homes have one person living alone, and about 14% are pensioners living alone, a group inside that first figure. Couples with dependent children make up about 26% of households and lone parents about 8%. Together they give a town with plenty of space for families and almost as many people living on their own. The four-bedroom house and the widowed neighbour next door are both typical of Berkhamsted.
About 53% of residents hold a degree-level qualification and about 10% hold no qualifications at all. Full-time students make up about 1% of residents. Berkhamsted has no university, and its eighteen-year-olds leave to study elsewhere. Many of them come back twenty years later, if they can afford to.
Berkhamsted's residents are among its real strengths, with good incomes, good qualifications and a lot of people who have no plans to leave.