Rotherhithe is a district of young renters on decent salaries, living alongside a large social-housing population that was here first. Only about a quarter of households own their home. The typical resident is in their early thirties. More than half of adults have a degree. Lone parents slightly outnumber couples raising children.
The 2021 Census, the source for every population figure on this page, counted about 60,600 people in about 26,700 households. Only about 25% of those households own their home. About 33% rent privately and about 38% rent from the council or a housing association. Social renting is the largest single tenure, which is easy to miss from the river walk, where the converted warehouses get all the attention.
The median resident is 33, and about 45% of people are aged 25 to 44. This is a district built around the years between a first job and a first child, and many people move on before the second.
The Office for National Statistics models median household income across the area at about £70,400 before tax, for the financial year to March 2023. That figure is gross and dates from three years ago, and it averages out two quite different groups: two salaries in a riverside flat and one income in a council block. Very few households actually earn the middle figure.
The households themselves are varied. About 33% are one person living alone, and about 7% of all households are a pensioner living alone, counted within that group. Couples with children make up about 12% of households and lone parents about 13%. Rotherhithe has more single parents than traditional families with two parents and children, and also more people living alone than either.
Qualifications cover both ends. About 56% of adult residents have a degree, about 15% have no formal qualifications at all, and only about 3% are full-time students. There is no university here filling the flats each September. These are graduates who have finished studying and stayed to commute.
People here report their own health as good: about 86% describe it as good or very good. Across Southwark as a whole, the rate of deaths from preventable causes is similar to England's, and the borough's smoking rate of about 7% is also judged similar to the national figure.
On who lives here, Rotherhithe comes out middling: a young, highly educated renting population on comfortable gross incomes, mixed with a large social-housing population that puts the area somewhere near the middle on deprivation. Buyers looking for a settled owner-occupier neighbourhood will find that only one household in four owns its home.