Harpenden is home to families who own their houses, earn well and hold degrees. Nearly eight in ten households own their home. Six in ten adults have a degree. About a third of households are couples with children. The town is middle-aged and has made itself comfortable.
The 2021 census, the source for every population figure here, counted 32,495 people in Harpenden. About 78% of households own their home, about 14% rent privately and about 8% rent from a council or housing association. For anyone hoping to rent first and buy later, private lets here are few, and the good ones go fast.
The typical Harpenden resident is 43, and people aged 25 to 44 make up about 21% of the population. The town has the age profile of a place people move to once they have a mortgage approved and a school list drawn up.
Household income across Harpenden was modelled by the Office for National Statistics at about £82,700 a year before tax in the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the town's neighbourhoods. Unemployment, at about 2%, barely registers.
About 32% of households are couples with dependent children, and about 7% are lone parents. On a weekend morning, Harpenden Common shows where the children are.
About 23% of households are one person living alone, and within that, about 12% of all households are a single pensioner on their own. The rest are mostly couples, either with grown-up children who have moved out or none yet, in a town where nearly half of homes have four bedrooms or more.
About 60% of Harpenden's adults hold a degree or equivalent, about 7% have no formal qualifications and about 2% are full-time students. Harpenden has housed serious science since Lawes founded Rothamsted in 1843, and the qualifications of the people living round it look the part. The students are mostly away at university, and the town is waiting for them to come back with a partner and a deposit.
Harpenden's people are one of its real strengths: owners who stay put, well qualified and well paid, and outnumbering almost every other kind of household in town.