Chowchilla, CA population, income and ZIP codes

Chowchilla city is a mid-size town in California, with 18,876 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #366 of 1,618 ranked by population — larger than 77% of them. The median age here is 34.6 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger profile than the country as a whole. Places under 65,000 residents only appear in the five-year release, never the one-year file, so these values pool sixty months of responses and lag the current year by design.

Households in Chowchilla city earn a median of $63,308 a year, 19.4% below the national figure of $78,538 and 31% below the $91,111 median for the 1,050 California cities we cover. Household income here is measured before tax and pooled across everyone at the address, which is why it reads higher than typical individual earnings in the same area. Poverty reaches 22.2% of residents here, well above the 12.4% national rate, which is the single clearest signal in this dataset that median income here is carried by a narrow band of households.

The typical owner-occupied home in Chowchilla city is valued at $331,500, 9.3% above the national figure and 44% below the $589,600 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,204 a month, 14.4% below the national figure, or roughly $14,448 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 22.8% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is within the standard affordability guideline. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 5.2×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 59% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. Rent is reported gross — contract rent plus tenant-paid utilities — which is why it runs above the advertised price on a listing for the same unit.

Every value on this page is published directly by the Census for this area — nothing is modelled or interpolated. Small-area estimates still carry wider margins of error than state or national figures, so check the linked ACS tables before relying on them for lending, appraisal or legal work.