Fort Madison, IA population, income and ZIP codes

Fort Madison city is a mid-size town in Iowa, with 10,221 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #42 of 1,026 ranked by population — larger than 96% of them. The median age here is 43.9 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly older 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 Fort Madison city earn a median of $49,359 a year, 37.2% below the national figure of $78,538 and 27% below the $67,791 median for the 290 Iowa 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 14.8% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Fort Madison city is valued at $95,900, 68.4% below the national figure and 39% below the $156,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $824 a month, 41.4% below the national figure, or roughly $9,888 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 20% 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 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. 73.1% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. 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.