Grown-ups with mortgages and school bags, mostly. Two in three households own their home. The typical resident is in their early forties. Half the adults have a degree. Nearly everyone says their health is good. New Malden is a suburb of people in the busiest years of their lives.
About 66% of New Malden households own their home, and about 24% rent privately. Another 9% rent from a council or housing association. The renters are still choosing which street to live on. The owners chose years ago, and many of them have extended since.
At the 2021 census, which is the source for every population figure on this page, the median age in New Malden was 41. About 27% of residents were aged 25 to 44. That is the age group that knows the school admissions calendar better than the football fixtures.
The national statistics office models New Malden's average household income at about £89,000 a year before tax, for the financial year to March 2023. That figure is gross, three years old and an average across the area, so plenty of households earn well under it. It is the number that goes on the mortgage application, and the bank's affordability calculator goes by the take-home pay.
Families make up a large part of the population. About 26% of households are couples with children and about 10% are lone parents with children. Count the scooters on any weekday school run and the couples-with-children figure looks believable.
At the other end, about 23% of households are one person living alone. Those include the 10% of households who are a single pensioner, so the two figures overlap. New Malden has room for people who have finished with the school run as well as those still on it.
About half of New Malden's adults hold a degree-level qualification, about 13% have no qualifications and about 2% are full-time students. With so few students, nobody here is living in shared houses between lectures. Most people finished their education years ago, and the student loan repayments are the main reminder.
At the census, about 86% of New Malden's residents described their health as good or very good. For Kingston upon Thames as a whole, Public Health England's successor body records the preventable death rate as better than the England average and the smoking rate as similar to it. Those are borough-wide figures for Kingston upon Thames, not New Malden's own, and they describe the borough's health record without explaining it.
About 705 residents live in communal settings such as care homes, out of almost 43,000 people. That is too few to change how any of the shares above should be read.
New Malden's population is one of its strengths. Most residents are grown up, in work, in good health and staying put.