ZIP code 50559

ZIP 50559 is a very small community in Kossuth County, Iowa, with 321 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #784 of 970 ranked by population — larger than 19% of them. The median age here is 65.3 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 ZIP 50559 earn a median of $52,708 a year, 32.9% below the national figure of $78,538. 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 0.9% of residents here, less than half the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 50559 is valued at not published, while median gross rent runs $1,025 a month, 27.1% below the national figure, or roughly $12,300 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 23.3% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is within the standard affordability guideline. 64% 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 65.3 puts ZIP 50559 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 321 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare ZIP 50559 against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld home value for ZIP 50559 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.

ZIP 50559 is tabulated inside Kossuth County, Iowa, one of 12 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 970 across Iowa. This is one of the smallest tabulated ZIP areas in the state, the kind of rural route where a single subdivision or farm cluster accounts for most addresses. County assignment on this page follows the largest share of the ZIP's land area, which matters where a delivery route crosses a county line: mail addressed to 50559 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 50559 reports a median household income of $52,708, 19% below the $64,886 county median, and 26% below the $71,182 typical IA ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of not published. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $1,025 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

Iowa charges 6% statewide, and local governments overlapping 50559 may add county, city or special-district levies on top. We publish the state floor for this ZIP rather than guessing a combined figure, because ZIP boundaries and taxing-district boundaries were drawn for different purposes and do not line up.

Everything above comes from the Census Bureau American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates for this ZIP Code Tabulation Area, with sales tax rates traced to the state revenue agency. Five-year estimates pool sixty months of responses, so they are stable enough to compare 50559 with its neighbours but always trail the current year, and any value the Census suppressed for sample size is shown as unpublished rather than filled in with a model.