Burghfield is lived in by families who have done well and then got out of town. Most people own their home. The typical resident is about forty. Four in ten adults have a degree. This is a village of people who reached the four-bedroom stage of life and decided that was far enough.
All the population figures here come from the 2021 Census unless stated otherwise. About 63% of households own their home, about 34% rent privately and about 3% rent socially. Renting is common enough that not every neighbour is a lifer, but the owners set the tone. There is no council estate here to speak of.
The median age is about 40, and about 29% of residents are aged 25 to 44. That is a population in the middle of things: mortgages, careers, children somewhere between car seats and university applications. Retirement villages have a different median. So do student towns. Burghfield has neither.
Modelled gross household income, before tax, averaged around £82,000 across the wider area in the financial year to March 2023. That is a figure for three years ago, not today, and it is modelled rather than counted door to door. It describes households that are comfortable, not households that are rich. Plenty of them spent a large share of it on the house.
Unemployment sits at about 1%, which fits a place where almost everyone is either working, retired, or a child.
About a third of households, 34%, are couples with dependent children. About 17% are one person living alone, and about 6% are single pensioners, who are part of that 17%, not an extra group. Lone-parent households make up about 6%. The family with children is the default, and the house layouts reflect it. Anyone living alone here is in a minority, often in a house built for four.
Education runs high. About 41% of adults hold a degree-level qualification, about 10% have no formal qualifications, and about 2% are full-time students. The students are mostly the children of the graduates, home between terms. Burghfield has no campus nearby to fill the rented rooms with anyone else's.
Self-reported health is good. About 90% of residents describe their health as good or very good. At the level of the whole West Berkshire council area, preventable mortality is better than the England average, and smoking, at about 8% of adults, is similar to England's. Those are council-wide figures with an England benchmark, not Burghfield's own, and they describe the district rather than the people on any one road.
About 51 people live in communal settings, such as care homes, rather than private households. That is too few to change how any of the shares above should be read.
The community is one of Burghfield's strongest points: settled, healthy, well qualified, and largely owner-occupied. It is a village made up almost entirely of households that have already made their big decisions.