Bicester is home to working families who own their houses and have no plans to move on. Two in three households own. The typical resident is in their late thirties. Families with children are as common as people living alone. Students barely register.
The 2021 Census, the source for every population figure on this page, counted 40,042 people in Bicester. About 65% of households own their home, about 20% rent privately and about 12% rent from a council or housing association. Leaseholding has a long history here: in 1597 the Earl of Derby sold a 9,999-year lease on the manor to 31 principal tenants, which remains the most generous lease term anyone in Bicester has been offered.
The typical resident is about 38, and about 32% of residents are between 25 and 44. The town's population is concentrated in the years of mortgages, nurseries and school runs, which is exactly who the late twentieth-century estates were built for.
The Office for National Statistics models typical household income in Bicester at about £67,000 a year before tax, for the financial year to March 2023. Gross pay at that level is the kind that gets a family a three-bed semi and a holiday, and the payslip after deductions is a smaller and more honest document.
Households are a mix of the young family and the lone adult. About 24% are couples with dependent children and about 24% are one person living alone, a group that includes the 9% of households who are a single pensioner. Lone parents head about 9% of households. The family home dominates the housing, and the single people are fitted in around it.
About 36% of adults hold a degree or equivalent, and about 15% have no formal qualifications. Full-time students make up about 2% of residents, because the university and its students are a bus ride away in Oxford, and Bicester gets them only once they have graduated, found a job and started looking for a garden.
Bicester's population is a strong point: a young, working, home-owning town, with families in the majority and very few people passing through.