Clapham is made up of young working graduates, renters for the most part, living alongside a large share of social tenants. The typical resident is in their early thirties. About two in three hold a degree. Barely a third of households own their home. Few families stay long enough to put a child through school here.
Clapham has about 52,400 residents in 22,779 households, and every population figure on this page comes from the 2021 census. About 35% of households own their home and 36% rent privately. Another 28% rent from the council or a housing association, a share that rarely comes up in Clapham's sales talk. That makes three tenures of roughly similar size living around the same Common.
The median resident is 32, and about 46% of residents are aged between 25 and 44. That is close to half the population in the twenty years between a first payslip and a first serious mortgage, which is exactly the stretch in which people discover how much Clapham costs.
The Office for National Statistics models gross household income at about £81,500 for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the area and measured before tax. After tax, the same households take home about £56,700, and the rent comes out of that smaller figure.
About 30% of households are one person living alone, and around 6% are a pensioner living alone, a smaller group within that 30%. Couples with dependent children make up about 11% of households, and lone parents about 10%. Families with children are a minority however they are grouped, and a two-parent family is barely more common than a one-parent one.
About 66% of residents hold a degree-level qualification, about 10% have no qualifications, and only about 2% are full-time students. Clapham has no campus to set its age. It collects its graduates later, once they have a job.
About 89% of residents describe their health as good or very good, and about 3% as bad or very bad. That fits a young population. Across Lambeth, the borough's smoking rate and its rate of preventable deaths are both similar to the England average.
Clapham's residents are young, well qualified and on decent incomes, with a large social-rented population alongside them, which makes for a broader mix than its reputation suggests and a better one than average.