South Charleston, WV population, income and ZIP codes

South Charleston city is a mid-size town in West Virginia, with 13,594 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #12 of 439 ranked by population — larger than 97% of them. The median age here is 41.1 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly older profile than the country as a whole. 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 South Charleston city earn a median of $59,616 a year, 24.1% below the national figure of $78,538 and 13% above the $52,974 median for the 148 West Virginia cities we cover. Household income here is measured before tax and pooled across everyone at the address, which is why it reads higher than typical individual earnings in the same area. Poverty reaches 21% 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 South Charleston city is valued at $144,800, 52.3% below the national figure and 14% above the $127,200 peer median, while median gross rent runs $857 a month, 39% below the national figure, or roughly $10,284 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 17.3% 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 2.4×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so purchase prices are unusually low against local pay, the pattern in places where supply is plentiful and wage growth has been flat. 68.9% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

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.