California, PA population, income and ZIP codes

California borough is a mid-size town in Pennsylvania, with 5,046 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #271 of 2,002 ranked by population — larger than 86% of them. The median age here is 21.4 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 California borough earn a median of $49,500 a year, 37% below the national figure of $78,538 and 30% 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 27.2% 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 California borough is valued at $142,600, 53% below the national figure and 26% below the $193,200 peer median, while median gross rent runs $792 a month, 43.7% below the national figure, or roughly $9,504 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 19.2% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is cheap relative to what people here earn. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 2.9×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 45.8% 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.

A median age of 21.4 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.

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.