Vale, SD population, income and ZIP codes

Vale CDP is a very small community in South Dakota, with 90 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #316 of 485 ranked by population — larger than 34% of them. The median age here is 73.5 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 Vale CDP earn a median of $23,661 a year, 69.9% below the national figure of $78,538 and 64% below the $65,500 median for the 79 South Dakota 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 11.1% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Vale CDP is valued at $58,900, 80.6% below the national figure and 69% below the $192,800 peer median, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 2.5×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 100% 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. 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 73.5 puts Vale 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. With 90 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare Vale CDP against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld gross rent for Vale CDP because the sample was too thin to publish at this geography. Those values were suppressed at the source, not lost in our dataset, and we do not model a replacement. Everything else on this page comes straight from the ACS 2019-2023 ACS 5-year tables.