Downley is lived in by families who own their houses and middle-aged couples who have finished buying them. More than eight in ten households own. The typical resident is in their mid-forties. Incomes are comfortable. Renters are hard to find, and students almost impossible.
The 2021 Census counted 2,946 people in 1,127 households, and it is the source for every population figure here. About 83% of households own their home, about 11% rent privately and about 5% rent from a social landlord. A village where only one household in ten pays a private landlord is a village where moving in mostly means buying in.
The median age is 44, and about 22% of residents are aged 25 to 44. That puts the centre of gravity in the years after the children start school and before they leave home. Downley is old enough to have a view on the conservation area and young enough to still be paying for the school run.
The Office for National Statistics models median household income at about £64,500 a year before tax for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the wider neighbourhood that includes Downley. That is a healthy household income, and still a gross figure, so the amount that reaches the bank each month is noticeably smaller. In a place where the typical house costs the best part of half a million, this is the income of people managing a large mortgage comfortably, and not the income of people who have stopped thinking about it.
Couples with dependent children make up about 29% of households, the largest single type. About 23% of households are one person living alone, and within that, about 14% of all households are a pensioner living alone. Lone-parent households account for about 9%. Downley is mostly families, with a sizeable group of older residents who stayed on after the children left and kept the spare rooms.
About 41% of adults hold a degree or equivalent, while about 14% have no formal qualifications. Full-time students are about 2% of residents, which is what happens when the nearest thing to student housing is a four-bedroom semi with a mortgage on it. The mix runs from graduates in professional jobs to long-standing residents who came up through work.
About 87% of residents described their health as good or very good at the Census. For the council area as a whole, Buckinghamshire does better than England on preventable deaths, and its smoking rate of about 8% is also better than the England figure. Those are figures for the whole of Buckinghamshire.
Downley is a strong, stable place in who lives there: owner-occupying families and settled older households, with comfortable incomes and good health. It is a community of people who meant to be here and do not plan to leave in a hurry.