East Dulwich is home to about 34,000 people, most of them in their thirties, educated to degree level and comfortably off. About half own their homes. The typical resident is in their mid-thirties. Around two in three adults hold a degree. This is a neighbourhood of people who arrived for a first flat and stayed for the second child.
Ownership and renting are split almost exactly down the middle. At the 2021 census, which is the source for every population figure on this page, about 50% of households owned their homes, about 27% rented privately and about 23% rented from a council or housing association. Owners, private tenants and social tenants share the same streets, and often the same converted house, one floor each.
The median age is about 36, and roughly 39% of residents are between 25 and 44. That is a population built around the decade when people pair up, change jobs, have children and start comparing nurseries. The over-sixties are present, but the place runs on the timetable of people with careers to build and small children to collect.
The Office for National Statistics models typical household income in East Dulwich at about £88,000 before tax for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the area's neighbourhoods. With a quarter of homes rented privately and nearly as many socially, that average covers some very different household budgets, and the mortgage arithmetic happens on what is left after tax.
Phyllis Pearsall, who put together the first London A to Z, was born in East Dulwich. She mapped the city, and London has been using her maps to find its way to Lordship Lane ever since.
The household make-up follows the age profile. About 29% of households are one person living alone, and about 7% are a single pensioner, a group counted inside the one-person figure. Couples with children make up about 21% of households and lone parents about 11%. That is roughly a third of homes with children in them, and a solid block of single people in flats who will be the couples-with-children figure at the next census.
Qualifications are high. About 64% of adults hold a degree or equivalent, about 10% have no formal qualifications, and only about 2% are full-time students. The universities are elsewhere. East Dulwich gets its graduates once they have finished studying and started looking for somewhere with a park and a decent bakery.
Health is good by the residents' own account, with about 88% describing their health as good or very good at the census. For Southwark as a whole, the preventable death rate is similar to the England average, and so is the smoking rate, at about 7%. Those are borough figures with the national benchmark beside them, and they describe the council area, Walworth and Bermondsey included.
The people of East Dulwich are a fairly well-off, well-educated crowd in their working prime, with renters and owners evenly mixed. It is a more balanced neighbourhood than its reputation as a professional enclave suggests, and a more prosperous one than its social housing share would lead anyone to assume.