Big Chimney, WV population, income and ZIP codes

Big Chimney CDP is a very small community in West Virginia, with 497 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #231 of 439 ranked by population — larger than 47% of them. The median age here is 54.9 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 Big Chimney CDP earn a median of $72,740 a year, 7.4% below the national figure of $78,538 and 37% above the $52,974 median for the 148 West Virginia 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 20.9% 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 Big Chimney CDP is valued at $216,500, 28.6% below the national figure and 70% above the $127,200 peer median, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 3×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 84.1% 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.

A median age of 54.9 puts Big Chimney 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 497 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare Big Chimney CDP against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld gross rent for Big Chimney 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.