Chigwell is mostly home-owning households in their working years, earning good money. Seven in ten own their home. The typical resident is in their late thirties. Four in ten have a degree. Chigwell has a twelfth-century church and a coaching inn, but most of the people living here are busy with mortgages and the school run.
The 2021 Census, the source for every population figure on this page, counted 12,591 people in 4,483 households in Chigwell. About 69% of households own their home, about 17% rent privately and about 13% rent from a council or housing association. Owners are firmly the majority, though nearly a third of households rent one way or another, which is more than the electric gates on the main roads would lead you to expect.
The median age in Chigwell is 39, and about 28% of residents are aged 25 to 44. That makes it a working-age town, not a retirement one. Chigwell is mostly people in the years of school runs and loft conversions, with the gardening years still some way off.
The Office for National Statistics models typical gross household income at about £72,500 a year, before tax, for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across Chigwell's three middle-sized statistical areas. The same modelling puts net income at about £52,300. That gap goes to tax before any of it reaches the mortgage, and the mortgage in Chigwell is a large one.
Single-person households make up about 21% of Chigwell's households. About 10% of all households are a single pensioner living alone, and those are counted inside that 21%. Couples with dependent children make up about 24% of households and lone parents about 13%. The rest are mostly couples without children at home and multi-adult households. Families with school-age children are the largest single group, which explains why Chigwell's roads fill up at 8.30 every weekday morning.
About 42% of residents aged 16 and over have a degree or equivalent, and about 16% have no formal qualifications. Full-time students make up about 2% of residents. Chigwell has graduates and people who left school at sixteen living on the same roads. Students are hardly part of the picture at all, because a town where most homes cost this much has very little cheap shared housing for them to rent.
Chigwell's population is one of its strengths. It is mostly working-age households that own their homes and earn well, with families making up the largest share of the households here.