Mostly people who were here long before the magazine features, not the people in them. About six in ten households own their home. The typical resident is in their mid-forties. One household in three is someone living alone. The census describes a seaside town, and the colour supplements describe a scene that the census barely notices.
About 58% of households own their home and about 30% rent privately, with around 12% in social housing. That private-rented share is where the conversions and the incomers' first year both sit. Anyone picturing the town as full of owners with a studio in the attic is looking at a smaller group than the lifestyle pages suggest.
The typical resident is 44, and about 24% of people are aged 25 to 44. Margate is middle-aged, not the young creative crowd its reputation promises, and not a retirement colony either. The people in their late twenties and thirties with laptops are here, but they don't set the town's average age.
Typical household income was about £47,400 before tax in the financial year to March 2023. That is a modelled estimate of gross income averaged across the area, a few years old, not a payslip from this year. It describes a town that works for a living, which is not how it tends to appear in property listings that sell it as a weekend retreat.
The 2021 Census is the source for the household figures that follow. About 35% of households are one person living alone, and about 16% are a single pensioner living alone. The pensioners are part of that one-person figure, not extra to it. That mix fits a town that retired people chose long before anyone else did. Couples with children make up about 15% of households and lone parents about 12%, so family life here is split close to evenly between two-parent and one-parent homes.
Qualifications cover a wide range. About 26% of residents hold a degree or equivalent, and about 23% have no formal qualifications. Only about 1% are full-time students, because there's no university campus pulling in young adults. Together those figures describe a town with a working population, not a graduate enclave, and the newcomers with degrees are a minority living among long-standing residents, not replacing them.
About 1,000 people live in communal settings such as care homes rather than private households, out of roughly 65,000 residents. That's too few to change how the other figures should be read.
On income and qualifications, the people of Margate are below average, and the gallery hasn't changed who makes up most of the town. What the census counts is an older, working seaside population, and it outnumbers the newcomers by a long way.