ZIP code 42154

ZIP 42154 is a very small community in Metcalfe County, Kentucky, with 704 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #527 of 779 ranked by population — larger than 32% of them. The median age here is 36.9 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger profile than the country as a whole. 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 42154 earn a median of $48,778 a year, 37.9% 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 26.6% 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 ZIP 42154 is valued at $89,100, 70.6% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 1.8×, 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. 90.7% 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. Rent is reported gross — contract rent plus tenant-paid utilities — which is why it runs above the advertised price on a listing for the same unit.

With 704 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare ZIP 42154 against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld gross rent for ZIP 42154 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 42154 is tabulated inside Metcalfe County, Kentucky, one of 5 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 779 across Kentucky. Fewer than 2,500 people are counted here, so the ZIP behaves like a village delivery route rather than a neighbourhood. 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 42154 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 42154 reports a median household income of $48,778, close to the $48,530 county median, and 10% below the $53,906 typical KY ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $89,100, 13% below the county figure and 32% below the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at not published a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

Kentucky charges 6% statewide, and no local sales tax is layered on top, so the state rate is the full amount collected in 42154.

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 42154 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.