Mullion is a village of homeowners over fifty. The typical resident is past the age when anyone still asks what they want to do with their life. Renting exists, split almost evenly between private landlords and social housing. Working-age households in their thirties are the exception rather than the rule. Settled is the honest word for it, and settled is not the same thing as comfortable.
The census of 2021, which is the source for every population figure here, puts owner-occupation at about 71% of households. Private renting accounts for roughly 14%, and social renting for about 14% more. That is an unusually even rental split for a coastal village, and it means the roughly three in ten households who do not own are not all dealing with the same landlord, the same tenancy terms or the same rent.
The age profile is the defining fact. The median age is 53. Only about 17% of residents fall into the 25 to 44 band, which is the stretch of life when people are normally buying first homes, having children and filling school gates. Mullion has a primary school and a secondary school and a shortage of the demographic that keeps them full.
On money, modelled household income for the area averaged about £45,700 in the financial year to March 2023, and that is gross, before tax and before anything else comes out. It describes that year rather than today, and it sits against a housing market priced for people arriving with capital from elsewhere.
Households skew small. About 27% are a single person living alone, and roughly 18% of all households are a pensioner living alone, which is a subset of that same single-person figure rather than an addition to it. Couples with dependent children make up about 17%, and lone-parent households about 9%. A village where nearly one household in five is an older person on their own has a particular set of needs, and a bus timetable with no peak-hour service is not one of the answers.
Qualifications land in an ordinary spread. About 30% of residents hold a degree-level qualification, around 17% hold none at all, and roughly 2% are full-time students. That is a mix of people who came here with professional careers behind them and people who have worked locally their whole lives, living on the same streets and generally getting on with it.
Health self-reporting is reasonable: about 78% describe their health as good or very good, and roughly 6% as bad or very bad. Widening out to the Cornwall council area, which is a much larger geography than this village, smoking prevalence runs at about 12% and is rated similar to England, and the preventable mortality rate is also rated similar to England. Cornwall is neither the healthy outlier nor the cautionary tale.
Around 53 residents live in communal establishments rather than private households, a small enough number that it does not distort any of the shares above.
The community is the weakest part of the case for living here. The area sits in the fourth decile nationally on the deprivation index and has moved down rather than up since 2019, which is what happens to a village economy leaning on visitors, second homes and a drive to the nearest town for anything resembling a career.