Brownsville, TX population, income and ZIP codes

Brownsville city is a mid-size city in Texas, with 188,023 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #18 of 1,863 ranked by population — larger than 99% of them. The median age here is 30.9 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. At this size the Census also publishes one-year estimates; the five-year values used here are steadier and let you compare against smaller neighbours on the same basis.

Households in Brownsville city earn a median of $48,675 a year, 38% below the national figure of $78,538 and 25% below the $64,654 median for the 1,008 Texas cities we cover. This figure covers the household, not the worker: two people on ordinary wages at one address outrank a single professional in the same table. Poverty reaches 24.9% 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 Brownsville city is valued at $122,400, 59.7% below the national figure and 32% below the $179,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs $906 a month, 35.6% below the national figure, or roughly $10,872 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 22.3% 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 2.5×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 59.9% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

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.