Castalia, IA population, income and ZIP codes

Castalia city is a very small community in Iowa, with 142 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #777 of 1,026 ranked by population — larger than 24% of them. The median age here is 59.3 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. At this population the ACS sample is small, so the margin of error around every dollar figure below is wide — treat the numbers as a band, not a point, and expect them to move between annual releases without the place itself changing.

Households in Castalia city earn a median of $50,714 a year, 35.4% below the national figure of $78,538 and 25% below the $67,791 median for the 290 Iowa 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 8.5% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Castalia city is valued at $96,900, 68.1% below the national figure and 38% below the $156,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 1.9×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so purchase prices are unusually low against local pay, the pattern in places where supply is plentiful and wage growth has been flat. 93.2% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, an owner-dominated market where rental listings are scarce and rent medians rest on a thin sample. 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 59.3 puts Castalia city well into retirement-weighted territory, which pulls median household income down even where household wealth is high, because retirement draws are counted differently from wages. With 142 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare Castalia city against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld gross rent for Castalia city because the sample was too thin to publish at this geography. Those values were suppressed at the source, not lost in our dataset, and we do not model a replacement. Everything else on this page comes straight from the ACS 2019-2023 ACS 5-year tables.