ZIP code 39203

ZIP 39203 is a small town in Hinds County, Mississippi, with 4,803 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #159 of 427 ranked by population — larger than 62% of them. The median age here is 33.1 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 39203 earn a median of $27,116 a year, 65.5% 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 33% 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 39203 is valued at $53,000, 82.5% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $739 a month, 47.4% below the national figure, or roughly $8,868 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 32.7% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is a stretch on median earnings. 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. 33.7% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

ZIP 39203 is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 32.7% of median income while homes cost only 2× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price.

All values below were released by the Census for this exact geography, with no gap-filling on our side. 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.

ZIP 39203 is tabulated inside Hinds County, Mississippi, one of 21 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 427 across Mississippi. Population sits in the small-town band, typically one main street plus the addresses that feed into it. 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 39203 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 39203 reports a median household income of $27,116, 42% below the $46,425 county median, and 45% below the $49,375 typical MS ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $53,000, 66% below the county figure and 53% below the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $739 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

A taxable purchase made inside 39203 carries 8% at the register, assembled from the Jackson jurisdiction stack: the Mississippi state rate plus every county, municipal and special district levy that reaches this address. Because those district boundaries were drawn for schools, transit and hospital funding rather than for mail delivery, two addresses inside 39203 can legitimately fall under different totals — the rate shown here is the one that applies to the dominant jurisdiction.

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 39203 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.