West Chester, IA population, income and ZIP codes

West Chester city is a very small community in Iowa, with 168 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #742 of 1,026 ranked by population — larger than 27% of them. The median age here is 28.5 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 West Chester city earn a median of $49,750 a year, 36.7% below the national figure of $78,538 and 27% below the $67,791 median for the 290 Iowa 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 28% 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 Chester city is valued at $73,800, 75.7% below the national figure and 53% below the $156,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $718 a month, 48.9% below the national figure, or roughly $8,616 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 17.3% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is cheap relative to what people here earn. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 1.5×, 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. 86.6% 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. 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.

A median age of 28.5 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. With 168 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare West Chester city against its county rather than against national figures.

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.