ZIP code 38859

ZIP 38859 is a very small community in Prentiss County, Mississippi, with 623 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #356 of 427 ranked by population — larger than 16% of them. The median age here is 47 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 38859 earn a median of $65,980 a year, 16% below the national figure of $78,538. 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 1.3% of residents here, less than half the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 38859 is valued at $133,200, 56.1% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 2×, 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. 94.5% 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. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

With 623 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare ZIP 38859 against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld gross rent for ZIP 38859 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 38859 is tabulated inside Prentiss County, Mississippi, one of 3 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 38859 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 38859 reports a median household income of $65,980, 27% above the $52,015 county median, and 34% above the $49,375 typical MS ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $133,200, 9% above the county figure and 17% above 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.

Mississippi charges 7% statewide, and local governments overlapping 38859 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 38859 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.