West Lafayette, IN population, income and ZIP codes

West Lafayette city is a small city in Indiana, with 44,802 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #23 of 976 ranked by population — larger than 97% of them. The median age here is 21.4 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 West Lafayette city earn a median of $33,497 a year, 57.3% below the national figure of $78,538 and 46% below the $61,527 median for the 355 Indiana cities we cover. Median household income counts every pre-tax dollar arriving at an address — wages, self-employment, Social Security, pensions, interest and public assistance — for everyone living there, so multi-earner households pull the figure up even where individual pay is modest. Poverty reaches 37.4% 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 West Lafayette city is valued at $318,100, 4.8% above the national figure and 118% above the $145,600 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,152 a month, 18.1% below the national figure, or roughly $13,824 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 41.3% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is severely stretched — a median-income renter clears the cost-burden line by a wide margin before utilities beyond the gross-rent definition. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 9.5×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is out of reach on local earnings alone and the ownership market leans on outside income, equity or dual high earners. 30.5% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. 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.

Home values sit at 9.5× median household income, far past the 3.9× national mark, so ownership costs here are set by something other than local wages — second homes, retirees with equity, or commuters earning elsewhere. A median age of 21.4 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.