High Wycombe is a town of working families in their thirties, with plenty of renters as well. About six in ten own their home. Around a quarter rent from a private landlord. The typical resident is in their mid-thirties. Most people are healthy, in work and busy.
About 59% of High Wycombe's households own their home, according to the 2021 Census, which is the source for every population figure on this page. Around 24% rent privately and about 16% rent from a council or housing association. Ownership is the majority, but four households in ten rent, and that is a lot of churn for a town of about 85,000 people.
The median resident is 36, and about 32% of people are aged 25 to 44. That is the age of first mortgages, nursery fees and a lot of driving to and from work. People in their late twenties and thirties shape the town, and the retired are not the ones setting its pace.
Household income in High Wycombe averaged about £62,000 before tax in the financial year to March 2023, an Office for National Statistics estimate modelled for neighbourhood areas and averaged across the town. It is a comfortable figure for a working family, before the tax man and the nursery take their share.
About 23% of households are couples with dependent children and about 11% are lone parents. Around 28% are one person living alone, and about 9% of all households are a pensioner living alone, a subset of that 28%. The single households include a lot of young renters in the flats near the centre and older residents in the post-war estates on the slopes, and between them they make up more of the town than the couples with children.
About 37% of adults hold a degree or equivalent, and about 18% have no formal qualifications. Full-time students are only about 3% of residents. Buckinghamshire New University has its main campus in the middle of town, yet the students barely register in the census, which suggests most of them sleep somewhere else. A town that a century ago was run entirely by the furniture trade now has more graduates than people with no qualifications.
About 85% of residents describe their health as good or very good, and about 4% as bad or very bad. At council level, Buckinghamshire does better than England on deaths from preventable causes. Its smoking rate of about 8% is also better than the England figure.
High Wycombe's population is a fair cross-section of a working town: young families, renters and commuters, comfortable without being wealthy, with neither the money nor the problems at either extreme.