Poplar Bluff, MO population, income and ZIP codes

Poplar Bluff city is a mid-size town in Missouri, with 16,243 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #53 of 1,082 ranked by population — larger than 95% of them. The median age here is 36.7 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger 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 Poplar Bluff city earn a median of $42,035 a year, 46.5% below the national figure of $78,538 and 24% below the $55,543 median for the 374 Missouri 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 23.5% 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 Poplar Bluff city is valued at $109,700, 63.8% below the national figure and 28% below the $152,400 peer median, while median gross rent runs $760 a month, 45.9% below the national figure, or roughly $9,120 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 21.7% 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 2.6×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 51.4% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

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.