Birchwood Lakes, PA population, income and ZIP codes

Birchwood Lakes CDP is a small town in Pennsylvania, with 1,255 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #880 of 2,002 ranked by population — larger than 56% of them. The median age here is 55 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. 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 Birchwood Lakes CDP earn a median of $52,164 a year, 33.6% below the national figure of $78,538 and 27% below the $71,118 median for the 982 Pennsylvania 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 24.2% 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 Birchwood Lakes CDP is valued at $171,900, 43.3% below the national figure and 11% below the $193,200 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,401 a month, essentially level with the national figure, or roughly $16,812 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 32.2% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is a stretch on median earnings. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 3.3×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 89.7% 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. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

Birchwood Lakes CDP is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 32.2% of median income while homes cost only 3.3× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price. A median age of 55 puts Birchwood Lakes CDP well into retirement-weighted territory, which pulls median household income down even where household wealth is high, because retirement draws are counted differently from wages.

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.