ZIP code 29540

ZIP 29540 is a small town in Darlington County, South Carolina, with 3,596 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #252 of 424 ranked by population — larger than 40% of them. The median age here is 49 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 29540 earn a median of $43,654 a year, 44.4% 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 20.9% 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 29540 is valued at $66,900, 77.9% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $798 a month, 43.2% below the national figure, or roughly $9,576 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 21.9% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is within the standard affordability guideline. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 1.5×, 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. 83.3% 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. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

No figure on this page is estimated by us; each one comes straight from the published ACS tables for this area. 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 29540 is tabulated inside Darlington County, South Carolina, one of 6 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 424 across South Carolina. 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 29540 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 29540 reports a median household income of $43,654, close to the $43,654 county median, and 24% below the $57,227 typical SC ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $66,900, 41% below the county figure and 60% below the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $798 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

South Carolina charges 6% statewide, and local governments overlapping 29540 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 29540 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.