Marston Moretaine is home to young families who own their houses and earn decent money. Seven in ten households own. The typical resident is in their mid-thirties. Nearly a third of households are couples with children. The whole village is in the middle of raising somebody.
The 2021 census is the source for every population figure here, and it counts 6,458 people in 2,491 households. About 72% of households own their home. About 10% rent privately and about 14% rent from a council or housing association. A private tenant here is in a small minority, surrounded by neighbours who have signed up for twenty-five years of the same street.
The median age is 36, and about 33% of residents are aged 25 to 44. The retirement wave has not reached Marston Moretaine yet, and the toddler wave got there first.
The Office for National Statistics models median household income across the area at about £72,000 before tax for the financial year to March 2023, which after tax comes to about £49,600. That is enough for a semi and two cars on the drive, and not so much that anyone stops checking the price of the weekly shop.
About 30% of households are couples with dependent children and about 12% are lone parents with children. About 20% are people living alone, and a smaller group within that, about 8% of all households, are pensioners living alone. Weekday mornings here are built around a school gate and a car seat.
About 34% of adults hold a degree or equivalent, about 14% have no formal qualifications, and about 2% of residents are full-time students. That is a fairly even mix, with most people sitting somewhere between the graduates and the school-leavers. James Smith, the poet who died in 1667, was a native of the village, and nobody has yet reported a second one.
About 88% of residents describe their health as good or very good, with about 3% reporting bad or very bad health. At council level, Central Bedfordshire's rate of deaths from preventable causes is better than the England average, and its smoking rate, at about 10% of adults, is similar to England's.
Marston Moretaine is a settled village of working families, comfortably off and mostly healthy, where most of the population is still busy getting the children to school.