Perth Suburb Demographics

All demographic figures come from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Census 2021— the most recent national Census. ABS publishes data at the Statistical Area Level 2 (SAL) which closely matches Australian suburb boundaries. Burb Score loads the ABS DataPacks directly and joins them to suburb polygons.

The Census runs every 5 years — the next one is August 2026, with results published in mid-2027. Until then, 2021 figures remain the only nationally consistent suburb-level demographic data available in Australia. Some figures (population, age) drift faster than others (ancestry, language, religion) — interpret accordingly.

Top-income Perth suburbs cluster in the western and southern coastal belt — Dalkeith, Peppermint Grove, Cottesloe, Mosman Park, Nedlands, City Beach, Floreat, Mount Claremont and Applecross consistently report median weekly household incomes above $3,000. The 2021 Census peak was Peppermint Grove at over $4,000/week. Cross-reference with house prices on the affordability page.

By language-other-than-English-spoken-at-home, Perth’s most diverse suburbs are inner-city and northern corridors — Northbridge, East Victoria Park, Bentley, Mirrabooka, Girrawheen and Balga. Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese and Arabic are the most common non-English languages across Perth metro per the 2021 Census.

Median age is the middle value of every resident’s age at Census night — half the population is younger, half older. ABS publishes this directly. In Perth, university suburbs (Crawley, Bentley) skew young; established outer + lifestyle coastal suburbs (Mandurah, Yallingup) skew older.

ICSEA (Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage) is a school-levelmetric centred at 1000 that includes parental education, occupation, indigenous status and remoteness — broader than income alone. A high-income suburb usually has high ICSEA schools, but a low-income suburb with university-educated parents (e.g. early-career academics) can show ICSEA above what income alone would suggest.