United States Demographics & Census Data 2026

StateDemographics.com turns raw U.S. Census Bureau data into readable profiles of every state, county, and city in America — all 50 states and the District of Columbia, 3,144 counties, and 31,526 cities, towns, and Census-designated places. Every page draws on the American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates, the Census Bureau's most reliable dataset for local-level statistics, and puts each number in context: how a community compares to its state, to the nation, and to its neighbors. All of it is free to browse, and every state page offers its full city and county dataset as a free CSV download.

America by the Numbers

Household income varies enormously across the country. Massachusetts tops the ranking with a median household income of $103,960 — about 1.8 times the figure in Mississippi, where the median household earns $56,447. The national median sits at $80,734, but only 19 of the 50 states exceed it, a reminder that a handful of large, high-cost coastal states pull the national figure upward.

Housing costs diverge even more sharply than incomes. The median home in Hawaii is valued at $839,100, 5.2 times the $162,600 median in West Virginia. Affordability — home value measured against local income — tells its own story: nationally a typical home costs about 4.1 times the median household income, but that ratio ranges from 2.7x in West Virginia, the most affordable state, to 8.4x in Hawaii, where housing costs have far outpaced local earnings.

Poverty follows a similar geography. New Hampshire has the nation's lowest poverty rate at 7.2%, while 18.9% of residents in Louisiana live below the poverty line, against a national rate of 12.4%. Education shapes much of this picture: 35.7% of American adults 25 and older hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the states and cities where that share is highest are, with few exceptions, also the ones with the highest incomes. Demographically, the country's median age is 38.9 years, with 21.9% of the population under 18 and 7.0% aged 75 or older — an age structure that varies widely between young, fast-growing Sun Belt suburbs and aging rural counties.

National Rankings

See how all 50 states — and America's largest cities — stack up against each other. Every ranking includes the complete list, a chart of the leaders, and written analysis. Browse them all on the rankings hub.

Free Calculators

Median income tells you where the middle sits; it doesn't tell you where you sit. Our income percentile calculator takes a household income and reports its exact rank nationally, within any state, and inside a specific county or city — all three side by side. The gap between them is often the interesting part: $100,000 a year lands near the 59th percentile nationally, but the same amount ranks very differently in a high-cost metro than in a rural county. It runs on the same ACS bracket data as the rest of the site, and it's free with no signup.

The home affordability calculator answers the other half of the question: it turns your income, debts, and down payment into a home-buying budget using the 28/36 rule lenders apply — then checks that budget against the median home value of every state and roughly 20,000 US cities to show exactly where it buys the typical home. The companion ranking lists the salary needed to buy a home in every state.

Original Data Insights

Beyond rankings, we publish original analyses that can only be computed across the full dataset at once: the cities where renters outnumber homeowners, a data-defined map of America's retirement towns, the housing affordability cliff between cities where a home costs sixteen years of income and cities where it costs one, and every college town in America found without naming a single university. Browse them all on the insights hub.

From the Blog

Our blog explains the numbers in plain English and puts our own data to work — how to read an income figure without being fooled, what the poverty rate really measures, and where America's wealth quietly clusters.

Explainer The Fine Print on Small-Town Census Numbers Every ACS number is a sample estimate with a margin of error — and for small towns that margin can be enormous. Analysis Same Paycheck, Different Life: Why Identical Incomes Don't Mean Equal Living Cities with the same ~$73,000 median income where homes cost anywhere from 3x to 10x local earnings — and what that ratio really means. Analysis Where College Degrees Cluster in America 35% of adults hold a bachelor's degree nationally; in some cities it tops 85% — and the top of the list splits into two distinct kinds of place.

Read all articles →

Most Populous States

Highest Median Income by State

Lowest Poverty Rates by State

All States

How to Use This Site

The site follows the same geography the Census Bureau uses, so you can drill down from broad to local. Start at a state page — say Texas — for the statewide picture, move to a county like Harris County to see how it compares to the rest of the state, and finish at a city page such as Houston for the full local profile: income distribution, age pyramid, race and ethnicity, education, employment, and housing.

Every state also has ranking pages that answer the most common comparison questions directly: the richest cities by median income, the most affordable cities by home-value-to-income ratio, the most educated cities, and all cities ranked by population. For cross-state comparisons, the national rankings sort all 50 states and the largest US cities by income, housing, education, and more. And if you'd rather work with the raw numbers yourself, each state page offers the complete city and county dataset as a free CSV download — no signup required.

About the Data

Everything on this site comes from the American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates published by the U.S. Census Bureau. Unlike the decennial census, which counts everyone once every ten years, the ACS continuously surveys about 3.5 million households annually and pools five years of responses. That pooling is what makes reliable statistics possible for small towns and rural counties that a single-year survey could never measure accurately.

Two honest caveats. First, because estimates are averaged over five years, they describe a period rather than a single moment — they will lag sudden local changes like a plant closing or a housing boom. Second, for very small communities the margins of error can be wide; a median income based on a few dozen survey responses is an estimate, not a precise measurement, and we flag the smallest places accordingly. The Census Bureau publishes margins of error for every figure at data.census.gov, and we explain our methodology in more detail on the methodology page.