Columbus, KS population, income and ZIP codes

Columbus city is a small town in Kansas, with 2,902 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #93 of 740 ranked by population — larger than 87% of them. The median age here is 41.9 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly older profile than the country as a whole. 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 Columbus city earn a median of $39,936 a year, 49.2% below the national figure of $78,538 and 37% below the $63,750 median for the 200 Kansas 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 19.4% 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 Columbus city is valued at $85,800, 71.7% below the national figure and 35% below the $131,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $768 a month, 45.4% below the national figure, or roughly $9,216 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 23.1% 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 2.1×, 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. 59.6% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. 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.

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.