Dunstable is mostly working households in their thirties and forties, buying their homes and driving to work. Two in three own their home. One household in three rents. The typical resident is in their late thirties. It is a town in the middle of its working life.
The 2021 census, the source for every population figure on this page, counted 35,019 people in 14,532 households. About 66% of households own their home. About 16% rent privately and another 16% rent from the council or a housing association. Private and social renting are about even here, which fits a town where the old borough council built whole estates at Northfields and Downside.
The median age is 39, and about 30% of residents are aged 25 to 44. People in Dunstable are paying off mortgages and raising children, and few are retired yet.
The Office for National Statistics models median household income in Dunstable at about £57,600 before tax for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the town's middle-sized statistical areas. Gross means before tax and national insurance, and any mortgage is paid from what is left. That figure describes a town where two ordinary salaries buy a semi and pay for the cars outside it.
About 29% of Dunstable's households are one person living alone, and about 12% are a pensioner living alone, a group counted within that 29%. About 21% are couples with dependent children and about 12% are lone-parent households. The town has plenty of families, but nearly as many front doors open on one person as on a couple with children.
About 29% of adults hold a degree-level qualification and about 17% have no formal qualifications. Full-time students make up about 2% of residents. Dunstable has a broad spread of qualifications and very few students living here.
About 84% of residents describe their health as good or very good. Central Bedfordshire, the council area that includes Dunstable, has a preventable death rate better than the England average, and its smoking rate is similar to England's. These are authority-wide comparisons with England, and they say nothing about the people on any one street in Dunstable.
The people of Dunstable look much like the residents of an average English town. Most are working, most own their homes, and the age profile sits between young and old.