Why It Matters
Population Age Makeup
Summary
We have recorded the age range of all the inhabitants in a given postcode.
Interpretation
| Dataset | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Estimated Percentage of persons aged 0 to 9 | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that are between 0 and 9 years old. |
| Estimated Percentage of persons aged 10 to 19 | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that are between 10 and 19 years old. |
| Estimated Percentage of persons aged 20 to 29 | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that are between 20 and 29 years old. |
| Estimated Percentage of persons aged 30 to 39 | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that are between 30 and 39 years old. |
| Estimated Percentage of persons aged 40 to 49 | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that are between 40 and 49 years old. |
| Estimated Percentage of persons aged 50 to 59 | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that are between 50 and 59 years old. |
| Estimated Percentage of persons aged 60 to 69 | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that are between 60 and 69 years old. |
| Estimated Percentage of persons aged 70 to 79 | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that are between 70 and 79 years old. |
| Estimated Percentage of persons aged 80+ | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your postcode that are 80 years old or more. |
| Mean age | This tells you the average age of all persons in your postcode expressed as a mean |
| Z-Score Mean age | This tells you how many standard deviations above or below the mean your postcode’s average age is within the London-wide distribution. |
Definition
When we refer to “age” structure, we are referring to residents’ ages as at their most recent birthday. For example, a new-born resident would be aged zero for the entire year between birth and their first birthday.
After their first birthday, they would be classified as being one year old. The % of the population attributable to each age band is a “de jure” count, based on neighbourhood inhabitants that are usually resident in the area of interest.
Why the metric matters from a commercial inhabitant’s perspective
Understanding the maturity or youthfulness, together with the mix of ages, within a neighbourhood is crucial to commercial inhabitants’ properly appreciating the market characteristics of the neighbourhoods they serve.
Age has one of the most significant bearings on consumer consumption decisions as it is based on behaviour patterns embedded in the age distribution of populations. As neighbourhoods are essentially just collections of human beings, and ageing is a feature of life, residents’ demand for certain products and amenities moves with the residents’ stage in the ageing process.
Ageing process events such as education, family formation, reproduction, child rearing, possible family breakdown, nest-emptying and eventual death, all dictate the extent and nature of the services, products and amenities residents crave from their neighbourhood and its surrounds.
Why the metric matters from a residential inhabitant’s perspective
The age mix of your neighbourhood is one of the factors that shapes it most. If your neighbourhood is predominantly home to younger persons, you are far more likely to find that governance authorities have permitted, and the market has provided a large supply of amenities to suit their needs such as schools, convenience food establishments, sports facilities, activity centres, and so on. At the other end of the spectrum, older populations are served by a greater proportion of social and recreational facilities.
Beyond the visual appearance of your neighbourhood owing to its age mix, you will find other social effects of having a certain age balance. One of the more obvious examples is that neighbourhoods with a high proportion of 15 to 24-year-olds typically experience more petty crime, vandalism and drink-related incidents than those neighbourhoods with a low proportion of that demographic. However, one of the positive side effects of living in a neighbourhood with this sort of age mix is that such neighbourhoods often benefit from a “creativity dividend”, giving them a certain energetic buzz.
(Photograph: Wikimedia Commons)
General Commentary
London’s age mix differs greatly to that of the UK as a whole. London has a much higher proportion of its population in the age range 25 to 34 than other areas of the UK. In Inner London, almost a quarter of the population are of this age group. This generally declines as one heads closer to the suburbs of London.
By comparison, in England as a whole, an average of 13 percent of the population are of this demographic. London also has a higher proportion of children under the age of five, and just one percent of London’s population is 85 years of age and older. Up to this point, each age band is decreasingly present in London relative to the rest of England.
Despite London being so different from the rest of the country, it still varies considerably from one area to the next and there are some far more youthful than others. The age mix of a locality will be one of the biggest influences on the amenity value which an area holds for residential inhabitants.
This Walulel metric along with that capturing the number of adult dependants with children will also indicate to residential inhabitants the amount of pressure on local services. For example, if you have a high proportion of those beyond retirement age in your locality then you may find that local care services are likely to be slightly overburdened.
Trivia
Despite London being home to fewer pensioners than the national average, those pensioners living in the capital who managed to purchase their own home in earlier life are some of the wealthier in the country, predominantly due to the appreciation in the price of property. All but two London boroughs are home to pensioners with properties that cost over one million pounds, and almost £70bn of pensioners’ property wealth is concentrated in 13 square miles across two West London boroughs. Just two London boroughs in 2016, Barking & Dagenham and Newham, had no pensioners living in million-pound properties at all.
History
Since demographic accounts, and later records, began, London has had a population which is more youthful overall than the rest of the country, as it attracted people of working age for employment purposes, both domestically and from overseas. We know that in the late 1600s, there were relatively low levels of birth within marriage and infant mortality was particularly high in urban areas - London was no exception. This period up to the early eighteenth century was also a period of high levels of immigration into London. The combination of low overall fertility rates with high levels of migration substantially skewed the age structure of London.
Low fertility rates, for instance, generally result in a low overall dependency ratio (the number of old and young people supported by the working population). For England as a whole, this ratio reached its lowest point in the 1670s. Because a high number of London’s inhabitants were relatively young recent migrants over the age of 14, EL the effect would be even more powerfully felt in the capital. In other words, London in the late For seventeenth century was not a city of children or the elderly. Instead, it was dominated by young men and women in their teens and twenties.
Into the eighteenth century, poor hygiene and living conditions meant that London’s population continued to be a youthful one. Infant mortality rates appeared to improve slightly and prosecutions for infanticide began to decline as attitudes towards single mothers changed and they were supported not stigmatised. By the early nineteenth century, there was a marked decline in infant mortality brought about by better hygiene and childrearing practices. By the 1840s, children born in the capital were three times less likely to die in childhood than those born in the 1730s. Birth rates in and out of marriage grew rapidly and this trend continued until 1913. Mortality rates in general also started to come in line with the rest of the nation due to better sanitation, food supplies and building standards.
The number of births then declined throughout the century, interrupted only by the two post-war ‘baby booms’ and a secondary peak in the 1960s. From this era to the present day, fertility rates continued to decline, and longevity is rising, however London continues not to reflect the ageing population of the rest of the country.