Wallington is home to mid-career households with comfortable incomes and mortgages to match. About six in ten own their home. The typical resident is in their late thirties. Renters are split evenly between private landlords and social housing. Comfortable, and not remotely flashy about it.
The 2021 census is the source for the population figures here, and it put about 63% of Wallington's households in homes they own, with private renting at about 18% and social renting at about 18%. Neither the landlords nor the housing associations and council have the upper hand, so the renting side of the town looks like two equal neighbours rather than one dominant one.
The median age is about 39, and about 29% of residents are between 25 and 44. Full-time students make up only about 2%. Wallington is a place people arrive at once their twenties are spent and the rent receipts have started to look like a mortgage.
Modelled median household income across Wallington was about £82,000 before tax in the financial year to March 2023, an Office for National Statistics estimate averaged over the area, so it describes incomes three years ago. After tax, the same modelled households came out at about £53,000 a year. The first figure is the one people quote at dinner parties, and the second is the one that pays for the semi.
Families are the biggest single block. About 23% of households are couples with dependent children, and about 13% are lone parents. About 29% are one person living alone, and within that group about 12% of all households are a pensioner on their own. That last group is part of the single-person share, so the two never add together.
About 39% of residents hold a degree-level qualification, and about 15% have no formal qualifications at all. Graduates and non-graduates live on the same streets, in the same semis and flats, and the town is a mix of both.
About 84% of residents described their health as good or very good in 2021. For the London Borough of Sutton as a whole, the rate of deaths from preventable causes is better than the England average, and the smoking rate, about 9%, is similar to England's. Those last two are borough-wide figures, covering everywhere from Wallington to the far side of Sutton, and Wallington's own streets will vary around them.
Wallington's population is middling in the best sense: comfortably off, mostly working, mostly owning, and with no extremes in either direction to make headlines.