Shepherd's Bush belongs to thirty-somethings who rent, and their landlord is as likely to be a council or housing association as a private one. About a quarter own their home. Half the adults have a degree. A third of households are one person living alone. Plenty of degrees, very few title deeds.
Ownership is the minority tenure. The 2021 Census, the source for every population figure on this page, found about 28% of households owning their home, about 32% renting privately and about 39% renting from a council or housing association. The social renters outnumber both of the other groups, which puts Shepherd's Bush closer to a council estate in its tenure mix than its prices would suggest.
The age profile is young. The median resident is 34, and about 37% of residents are aged between 25 and 44. Those are the years of first jobs, flat-shares and saving for a deposit, and in Shepherd's Bush most residents are somewhere in them.
The Office for National Statistics models average household income here at about £71,500 before tax for the financial year to March 2023, averaged across the neighbourhoods that make up the area. With nearly four in ten households in social housing and the rest in private flats and terraces, that average sits somewhere between the two and describes neither very well.
Households are small. About 35% are one person living alone, and about 8% of all households are a pensioner living alone, a group that sits inside the one-person figure. Couples with dependent children make up about 14% of households and lone parents about 16%, so single-parent households outnumber two-parent families with children here.
Qualifications cover the full range. About 51% of adults hold a degree or higher, about 15% have no qualifications at all, and full-time students make up only about 3% of residents. Graduates in their thirties and residents with no formal qualifications live in the same postcodes, and often in the same buildings. With so few students, most of those degrees were earned elsewhere and arrived later with a job in London.
Health is good by its own account. About 85% of residents describe their health as good or very good, and about 5% as bad or very bad. Across Hammersmith and Fulham as a whole, the borough's rate of deaths from preventable causes is similar to England's, and so is its smoking rate, with about 12% of adults smoking.
The population of Shepherd's Bush is young, educated, mostly renting and split between social housing and private flats. It is a middling mix, defined less by any one group than by how many different ones share the same streets.