DeKalb, IL population, income and ZIP codes

DeKalb city is a small city in Illinois, with 40,464 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #40 of 1,462 ranked by population — larger than 97% of them. The median age here is 25.4 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 DeKalb city earn a median of $46,564 a year, 40.7% below the national figure of $78,538 and 37% below the $74,244 median for the 698 Illinois cities we cover. This figure covers the household, not the worker: two people on ordinary wages at one address outrank a single professional in the same table. Poverty reaches 25.7% 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 DeKalb city is valued at $202,900, 33.1% below the national figure and 13% above the $179,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,030 a month, 26.7% below the national figure, or roughly $12,360 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 26.5% 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 4.4×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 42.5% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

A median age of 25.4 means a large student or early-career population; income medians in places like this understate household resources, since many residents are supported from outside the address.

All values below were released by the Census for this exact geography, with no gap-filling on our side. 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.