Chalfont St Giles is home to well-off, well-educated homeowners, most of them past the age when people buy their first house. About eight in ten households own their home. Nearly half the adults have a degree. The typical resident is in their late forties, and most say their health is good. Hardly any households rent privately.
The 2021 Census is the source for the population figures on this page, and on tenure it found about 82% of households owned their home. About 9% rented privately and about 8% rented from a social landlord, so renters of both kinds together are a small minority. For a village with prices like these, the social renting share is a reminder that not everyone here bought in at today's levels.
The median age is 48, and people aged 25 to 44 make up about 18% of residents. That is the age group that usually buys first homes, has young children and moves for work, and here it is small. The village is not old, but most of its residents have been homeowners for a long time.
The Office for National Statistics models gross household income for the area at about £78,000 for the financial year to March 2023, before tax and averaged across the neighbourhood. That is a comfortable figure, and it is also only an average, so it covers both the household on two professional salaries and the widow on a pension in the same house she bought decades ago.
About 25% of households are couples with dependent children, and about 7% are lone parents. About 24% of households are one person living alone, and about 15% are a pensioner living alone, part of that same 24%. Almost as many households are someone on their own as are families with children, and many of those living alone are older. The village takes in families, but it is also where people stay on long after the children have left.
About 46% of residents have a degree, about 11% have no formal qualifications and about 2% are full-time students. Graduates are the biggest group by a distance, while a sizeable minority left school without qualifications, so the village isn't all one type. With so few students, there are no shared houses and no September influx of new arrivals.
About 88% of residents describe their health as good or very good. Buckinghamshire Council's area does better than England on preventable deaths, and about 8% of adults in the county smoke, also better than the England figure. The county figures cover Buckinghamshire as a whole, while the self-reported health figure is the village's own.
The people who live here are one of Chalfont St Giles's real strengths: settled, healthy, well-educated owners, with families and long-term residents living alongside each other.