Highgate is home to about 21,800 people, most of them graduates with good incomes, and they are split close to evenly between owners and renters. About half own their home. About a third rent privately. The typical resident is about 40. Seven in ten have a degree, and very few of them are still studying for one.
The Census counted 10,025 households, and the 2021 Census is the source for the population figures on this page. Just over half (51%) own their home, about 33% rent privately and about 14% rent socially. The social housing includes Highgate New Town, the post-war estate Camden Council designed beside the cemetery, so the hill holds council tenants, private renters and owners within a few streets of one another.
The typical resident is about 40 years old, and about 34% of the population is aged between 25 and 44. That is a population in the middle of careers, mortgages and nursery fees, more than one starting out or winding down.
The Office for National Statistics models typical household income in Highgate at about £82,000 before tax for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the area's neighbourhoods. That is the gross figure from a few years ago. A lender will look at the take-home pay behind it much more carefully than a buyer looking at the headline number tends to.
Lone parents head about 8% of households.
The biggest single group is people living alone, at about 36% of households, and about 12% of all households are pensioners living alone, which is part of that same 36%. Couples with dependent children make up about 17%. Most homes are flats on a hill, and that produces this mix of a lot of single households, a fair number of families and plenty of people with nobody to share the heating bill with.
About 70% of adults have a degree, about 7% have no qualifications and about 2% are full-time students. Highgate has plenty of graduates and very few students, because its residents did their studying somewhere else and moved here afterwards.
About 88% of residents describe their health as good or very good. Across Haringey as a whole, preventable deaths are similar to the England rate, and so is smoking, at about 19% of adults, according to the public health figures for the borough.
Highgate is made up mostly of educated, comfortably-off people in their working years, a mix of owners and renters living mainly in flats. It is a better mix than average, though less uniform than the hilltop's reputation suggests.