Most people in Redbourn are home-owning, middle-aged and comfortably off. Three in four households own their home. The typical resident is in their mid-forties. Almost half the adults have a degree. People tend to arrive in Redbourn with their careers under way and then stay for the common.
At the 2021 census about 75% of Redbourn's households owned their home, about 9% rented privately and about 16% rented from a social landlord. There are more social renters than private ones, so a good share of the village's homes were never bought at anything like today's prices.
The census puts the typical Redbourn resident at 46, and only about 21% of residents are aged 25 to 44. Not many people buy their first home here in their twenties. They tend to come once the deposit and the children have both arrived.
The Office for National Statistics models gross household income across the area at about £75,700 a year for the financial year to March 2023. That figure is before tax, it is several years old, and it is an average for a wider statistical area that includes the village. It covers the pensioners and the two-salary households together, so few households in Redbourn will earn that exact amount.
The 2021 census, which is the source for every population figure on this page, shows how Redbourn's 2,225 households break down. About 24% are couples with dependent children and about 10% are lone-parent households. About 27% are one person living alone, and pensioners living alone make up about 16% of all households. Redbourn effectively runs on two timetables, one set by the school bell and one set by no one.
About 45% of Redbourn's adults have a degree, about 12% have no formal qualifications, and only about 2% of residents are full-time students. There is no college or university in the village and so no term-time student population. Redbourn's residents mostly finished their education long ago and somewhere else.
Redbourn's population is one of its strengths: people are prosperous, educated and mostly staying put. Its social housing and its pensioners living alone stop the village being made up entirely of one type of household.