People at the busiest stage of their lives. Owners make up just under half the households. The typical resident is in their mid-thirties. Nearly one household in five is a single parent with children. These are people with a lot to juggle at once.
About 47% of Croydon's households own their home. Of the rest, about 29% rent privately and about 23% rent from the council or a housing association, so renting outnumbers owning. On most streets, owners, private tenants and social tenants live side by side, often in the same block of flats.
The typical resident is about 36, and people aged 25 to 44 make up about 32% of the population. Many arrive at the age when one bedroom stops being enough and two-beds within reach of London start to look attractive. Croydon College near East Croydon station adds to that mix, yet full-time students are only about 3% of residents. Most of them commute in from somewhere else, as the office workers do.
The Office for National Statistics models median household income across the area at about £71,000 before tax for the financial year to March 2023. That is an estimate averaged across neighbourhoods, and it describes three years ago. Because it is gross, tax and National Insurance still come off before anyone pays a mortgage or rent.
All the population figures here come from the 2021 census. About 29% of households are one person living alone, and about 9% are a pensioner living alone, a group that is part of that 29% and not on top of it. Couples with children make up about 18% of households, and lone parents another 18%. Croydon has as many single parents as couples with children, and that shapes school places, demand for flats and the morning rush on the buses. About 1,200 people live in care homes, halls and similar communal settings, too few to change any of these shares.
Qualifications vary widely. About 39% of adults hold a degree, about 18% have no formal qualifications, and the rest fall in between. Graduates and people who left school without qualifications live on the same streets.
About 84% of residents describe their health as good or very good. The wider picture comes from the London Borough of Croydon as a whole, measured against England. The borough's rate of preventable deaths is similar to the England figure, and so is its smoking rate, with about 13% of adults smoking. Croydon is close to the national average on both.
On who lives here, Croydon is below average for the places this site covers. It is a hardworking, fairly stretched town where many households rent and many parents raise children on their own.