Darenth is mostly working families in their thirties and forties, and most of them own their home. About two in three are owner-occupiers. Around one household in four is a couple with children. Almost nobody rents from a private landlord. Students barely register. It's a village built around the school run, and it still runs on one.
About 65% of households own their home, and only 7% rent privately. Most of the rest rent from a social landlord. Private landlords have barely got a foothold, which leaves Darenth split between people paying a mortgage and people paying a housing association, with very few paying anyone in between.
The median age is 38, and about 28% of residents are aged 25 to 44. Thirty-eight is old enough to own the semi and young enough to have a long way left on the mortgage.
The Office for National Statistics models median household income at about £60,600 a year before tax for the financial year to March 2023, averaged over the middle-layer statistical areas around Darenth. That's a figure from a few years back, before tax, national insurance and the commute have had their share. It covers a family mortgage on an ordinary three-bed in this part of Kent, but it doesn't leave much spare.
Every population figure on this page comes from the 2021 census. About 24% of households are couples with dependent children and 15% are lone parents. That's a lot of houses where the evening schedule is set by someone under twelve.
About 20% of households are one person living alone, and 9% of all households are a single pensioner, a group counted inside that one-person figure. Darenth's households are mostly full ones, and the people living alone are spread across every age.
About 25% of residents hold a degree, about 21% have no formal qualifications, and full-time students make up about 1%. That last figure means nobody in Darenth is cooking pasta at three in the morning before a deadline. Most adults here learned their trade at work and went into it young.
Darenth is a working village, not a well-heeled one. The money and the degrees run thinner than its commuter-belt address would suggest, and the families here are busy earning the mortgage.