The city’s population has grown 6.7 per cent, from 39,878 people to 42,550 in the past five years, Census data by the Australian Bureau of Statistics released on Tuesday shows.

The results from the nationwide population survey shed a light on who we are, how we live, what we do and where we are headed.

In Bathurst, the average age is 37 years old, however, the largest sector of the population is aged 20-24 years with 3201 (7.5 per cent) in that group.

Men continue to outnumber women in 2795 postcode, but only just, by 21,372 to 21,184.

Bathurst is home to 10,468 families, and those who have children have an average of 1.9 per family.

But not all families in Bathurst are the same.

The data shows 42.5 per cent are couple families with children, 38.5 per cent are a couple family with no children, 17.6 per cent are one parent families, with a further 1.3 per cent saying they had an ‘other family’.

Almost half of Bathurst’s population (45.3 per cent) is married, however, 37 per cent say they have never been married.

The average weekly household income in Bathurst is $1310, this is lower than the national average of $1438.

Of the 14,848 occupied dwellings in Bathurst, 66.6 per cent are owned outright or have a mortgage, while 30.2 per cent are rented.

The average rent is $275 while the median mortgage repayment is $1668.

Western Research Institute general manager Wendy Mason said the data collected through the Census, which is held every five years, was vitally important to a wide number of organisations.

“It helps government organisations to understand and plan for things in the future,” she said.

“It allows us to understand the demographics of a place like Bathurst – how people live, how they work. It helps calculate where a community is at and whether its needs are being met.”

In the Census, 35.3 per cent of people were attending an educational institution, of these, 25.2 per cent were in primary school, 20.2 per cent in secondary school and 20.1 per cent were in a tertiary or technical institution.

Catholicism is the most common religion in Bathurst at 31.1 per cent, but 22.4 per cent said they had no religion at all.

The vast majority 83.7 per cent (35,560) of people who live in Bathurst were born in Australia, however, 29.6 per cent listed their ancestry as English.

Also, 69.7 per cent of respondents said they undertook unpaid domestic work in the week leading up to the Census, with 26.8 per cent (9163 people) saying they spent between five to 14 hours per week doing domestic chores.