Columbus, MS population, income and ZIP codes

Columbus city is a mid-size town in Mississippi, with 23,616 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #18 of 427 ranked by population — larger than 96% of them. The median age here is 39.6 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 Columbus city earn a median of $40,588 a year, 48.3% below the national figure of $78,538 and 8% below the $44,178 median for the 191 Mississippi 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 21.6% 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 $121,200, 60.1% below the national figure and within a couple of points of the $121,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $882 a month, 37.3% below the national figure, or roughly $10,584 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 26.1% 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 3×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 48.1% 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.