Bowling Green, KY population, income and ZIP codes

Bowling Green city is a small city in Kentucky, with 73,638 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #3 of 554 ranked by population — larger than 99% of them. The median age here is 27.9 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. At this size the Census also publishes one-year estimates; the five-year values used here are steadier and let you compare against smaller neighbours on the same basis.

Households in Bowling Green city earn a median of $48,419 a year, 38.3% below the national figure of $78,538 and 13% below the $55,469 median for the 246 Kentucky cities we cover. The median is the midpoint household, not an average, so a handful of very high earners cannot drag it upward the way they distort a mean. Poverty reaches 25.4% 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 Bowling Green city is valued at $232,100, 23.5% below the national figure and 48% above the $157,200 peer median, while median gross rent runs $948 a month, 32.6% below the national figure, or roughly $11,376 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 23.5% 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 4.8×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 37.3% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. 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 27.9 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.

No figure on this page is estimated by us; each one comes straight from the published ACS tables for this area. 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.