Upper Edmonton is home to young adults and families, most of them renting. About six in ten households rent. The typical resident is in their mid-thirties. Lone parents and couples with children make up similar shares of the households. People with degrees and people with no qualifications are about equally common. This is a place where people raise children and pay rent, and it has more than its share of the strain that comes with both.
The 2021 census, which is the source for every population figure here, counted about 36,700 people in Upper Edmonton in 12,503 households. About 39% of those households owned their home, about 34% rented privately and about 26% rented from a council or housing association. Most households here pay rent every month and own nothing.
The median age is 34, and about 29% of residents are aged between 25 and 44. Only about 3% are full-time students, so the young age profile comes from people working and raising families here, not from a university.
The Office for National Statistics modelled median household income across the area's neighbourhoods at about £58,000 a year before tax, for the financial year to March 2023. After tax the same modelling comes to about £42,000. Gross income is the figure that gets quoted, but a London rent is paid out of the net one.
About 24% of households are one person living alone, and about 8% are a single pensioner living alone, a group counted inside that 24%. Couples with children make up about 19% of households, and lone parents about 23%. Single-parent households outnumber couples with children, so many households here run on one income and one adult's time.
About 29% of residents hold a degree and about 28% have no formal qualifications. Graduates and those without qualifications live in roughly equal numbers, often on the same streets. That split shows up in what households earn and in how much space they can afford.
About 83% of residents described their health as good or very good at the census. Across Enfield as a whole, the rate of deaths from preventable causes is better than England's, and the borough's smoking rate, about 14%, is similar to the national figure. Those are borough figures, so they show what Enfield's health services are working with, not how healthy any one street is.
Most Upper Edmonton residents rent and are raising children on earnings that do not stretch far, and the area's community profile is poor as a result. The people here are not the cause of that. The cause is a tenure and income mix that leaves little room to spare.