Chesham is home to working families, long-time owners and more social tenants than most of its Buckinghamshire neighbours have. About two in three households own their home. About one in five rents from a council or housing association. The typical resident is in their early forties. In Chesham, plenty of people moved in without bringing equity from somewhere else.
At the 2021 Census, the source for every population figure on this page, 65% of Chesham's households owned their home. Another 14% rented privately and 21% rented from a council or housing association. The town grew in waves, with Pond Park in the 1930s and then the Chessmount and Hilltop estates in the 1950s and 1960s, when workers followed their employers out of London. The estates the developers built for that move are still where much of the town lives.
The median resident is 41, and about 26% of the population is aged 25 to 44. Chesham is a town of people in the middle of their working lives, and of the mortgages that go with them.
Household income in Chesham averaged about £67,000 before tax in the financial year to March 2023, on the Office for National Statistics' model for the area. That is a figure from a few years ago, taken before tax and averaged over the whole town. It hides both the farmhouses up at Asheridge and the flats near the High Street.
Chesham has 9,762 households. About 29% are one person living alone, and about 13% are pensioners living alone, who are counted within that 29%. Couples with dependent children make up about 23% and lone parents about 10%. The school run and the pensioner living alone share the same streets, often the same row of houses.
About 39% of adults have a degree and about 16% have no formal qualifications, while full-time students are about 2%. The town still has a brush maker and a pair of industrial parks, and plenty of people now earn their living on laptops. Both groups live in Chesham, and the qualifications figures reflect the two together.
About 85% of Chesham's residents describe their health as good or very good. Across Buckinghamshire as a whole, the rate of deaths from preventable causes is better than England's, and so is the smoking rate, at about 8%.
The people of Chesham are a middling mix. There are enough owners, graduates and families to keep the town comfortable, and enough social tenants and people without a degree to keep it from turning into a dormitory for wealthy commuters.