Highbury is mostly professionals in their thirties, and most of them rent. Owners, private renters and council or housing association tenants each make up about a third. Most adults have a degree. Families with children are a minority. It's a well-educated, well-paid neighbourhood where most residents don't own the flat they live in.
The 2021 census, the source for the population figures here, found about 35% of households owned their home, about 33% rented privately and about 31% rented from a council or housing association. In plenty of Highbury's subdivided old houses, the owner-occupier, the private tenant and the social tenant may share a staircase without any of them knowing who is which.
The typical resident is 34, and about 45% of residents are aged 25 to 44. That is a neighbourhood at the career-building stage, and the 25 to 44 group outnumbers the children and the retired combined in most streets' recycling bins.
Average household income across Highbury was about £79,000 before tax in the financial year to March 2023, a figure modelled by the Office for National Statistics for the area. That is gross household income several years old, and with rents and flat prices at Highbury levels, a good chunk of it goes straight back out on housing.
The household mix reflects all those flats. About 34% of households are one person living alone, and about 7% are a pensioner living alone, a smaller group within that third. Couples with dependent children make up about 15% of households, and lone parents about 11%.
About 65% of adults have a degree, about 11% have no formal qualifications and about 2% are in full-time education. Highbury is mostly graduates, not students. The universities are elsewhere, and their graduates come here once they can afford the rent. A pub quiz in Highbury is no place for the casual.
Health is good where people describe their own. About 87% of residents rated their health as good or very good at the census. Across Islington as a whole, the rate of deaths considered preventable is worse than England's, while the borough's smoking rate, about 9%, is similar to the national figure. Those two are borough figures, measured against England, and they describe Islington, not any one Highbury household.
Highbury's residents are a better-than-average mix: young, educated, mostly in good health, and mostly renting.