ZIP code 38685

ZIP 38685 is a very small community in Marshall County, Mississippi, with 983 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #329 of 427 ranked by population — larger than 23% of them. The median age here is 63.7 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 38685 earn a median of $45,972 a year, 41.5% 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 16.2% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 38685 is valued at not published, while median gross rent runs not published a month. 93.3% 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.

A median age of 63.7 puts ZIP 38685 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 983 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare ZIP 38685 against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld home value, gross rent for ZIP 38685 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 38685 is tabulated inside Marshall County, Mississippi, one of 5 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 427 across Mississippi. 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 38685 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 38685 reports a median household income of $45,972, 14% below the $53,441 county median, and 7% below the $49,375 typical MS ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of not published. 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.

Mississippi charges 7% statewide, and local governments overlapping 38685 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 38685 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.