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Place dossier plate
SheetKY-FRANKLIN-KY · Franklin, KY 10,254 pop · income 28th pct · 5 tracts
Instrument codes from this place’s ACS population and household income, BEA state COL, FBI safety, national income percentile, photo-finish peer city, home-value band, and matched Census-tract book - not a moving recommendation.
Income neighbourhood around Franklin
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Franklin on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Mayfield · lowest
41,458
Mayfield · lowest
41,458 median HH income
28.3% of the leader · rank #1
Altus · near
55,550
Altus · near
55,550 median HH income
38.0% of the leader · rank #2
North Warren · near
55,551
North Warren · near
55,551 median HH income
38.0% of the leader · rank #3
Franklin · this city
55,552
Franklin · this city
55,552 median HH income
38.0% of the leader · rank #4
Dixon Lane-Me… · near
55,556
Dixon Lane-Me… · near
55,556 median HH income
38.0% of the leader · rank #5
Mechanicsburg · near
55,556
Mechanicsburg · near
55,556 median HH income
38.0% of the leader · rank #6
Francisville · highest
146,280
Francisville · highest
146,280 median HH income
100.0% of the leader · rank #7
What this shows Neighbourhood peers only - not a full nationwide city board. Open a near peer when the gap is small; open the poles when the spread is wide.
Compare beyond this state
Nationwide peers by population, income, and FBI crime rate
Out-of-state nearest neighbors for Franklin on ACS population and median household income
, plus FBI UCR reporting rate when the extract covers this place. Link sets are deduped so each column is a distinct comparison path, not a forecast that peers share a labor market or climate.
Similar population
Nearest out-of-state cities by ACS population. This city: 10,254.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Franklin - the verdict
Measured against every US city with at least 1,000 residents, Franklin lands in the 28th percentile for household income and the 63rd percentile for safety. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
28th
percentile, household income
34th
percentile, home value
10th
percentile, median rent
63rd
percentile, safety
📝 How we sourced this
Population, income, and housing-cost figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates (B-series tables). Crime data uses FBI UCR; climate uses NOAA Climate Normals; school counts come from NCES Common Core of Data; permits use the Census Building Permits Survey (BPS). See our methodology page for the full ETL pipeline and OMB / FIPS join keys.
Data Snapshot: Franklin, KY
10,254 people live in Franklin, Kentucky - a small town by U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023 estimates. Franklin households earn a median of $55,552 annually, below the median for U.S. cities on this measure, with a poverty rate of 11.0%. Franklin's housing stock carries a median value of $170,400, and the median resident age is 34.4 years. About 13.4% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, while 50.8% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
Franklin reports a comparatively low crime rate: the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program logs 1023.1 total incidents per 100,000 residents here, below the national average (agency reporting is voluntary, so this measures reporting activity, not a definitive danger score).
Living costs in Kentucky run below the national norm: BEA Regional Price Parities 2024 puts Kentucky at 90.2 on a 100-equals-national-average scale (Well Below Average). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in this state is $984 per month. Statewide, average monthly utility bills in Kentucky run around $225, per EIA 2023 residential energy data. FEMA's National Risk Index rates natural-hazard exposure at 44.2 out of 100 (Low).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Franklin's data
How this reading path is ordered
This is not a composite city score. It is a city-specific route through the available public records, ordered for this profile so the page starts with questions the joined data can actually answer. The route here runs from comparison shortlist to reported crime to schools and households to housing and income to within-city variation to population change to work and mobility; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Franklin, city-specific coverage includes FBI reported-crime rates, matched public-school count, commute-mode shares, within-city Census tract profiles, annual population history.
No matched row is reported here for local building permits; the page leaves those layers out instead of substituting a statewide or national value.
Question 1
Which cities make useful reference points for Franklin?
Within Kentucky, the closest population matches are Francisville (10,313 residents, $146,280 income); La Grange (10,188 residents, $86,222 income); Versailles (10,382 residents, $58,834 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Vernal, UT (10,254 residents); Elkhorn, WI (10,259 residents); Carroll, IA (10,261 residents). A third, income-matched reference set of 6 out-of-state cities sits in the income neighbourhood chart near the Place Dossier plate. These are mechanical peer sets, not claims that the places share a labor market, climate, culture, or metro context.
Use the in-state set to hold state policy and broad price conditions more nearly constant. Use the nationwide size set to ask whether cities with a similar resident count produce different housing, income, or commute outcomes. The income set is a third lens, deliberately separate from population matching. The nationwide peer panel below adds a fourth FBI UCR reporting-rate lens, not personal risk.
What can the FBI record say about safety in Franklin?
Treat this as a reporting-rate comparison, not a prediction of personal risk or a neighborhood-level safety grade. Tourism, daytime population, reporting practices, and variation inside the city are not adjusted away. The state rank and same-state peer table are the narrower comparisons available on this page.
The joined FBI UCR record reports 1023.1 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, below the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 55% lower in arithmetic terms, but agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies.
The NCES join finds 6 public schools within the city match. 13.4% of adults age 25+ hold a bachelor's degree or higher in the ACS estimate. These measures answer different questions: the school count describes local institutions, while adult attainment describes residents and cannot be used as a school-quality rating.
The city has a broader matched school footprint, but count alone does not describe performance, capacity, program availability, or attendance boundaries. This profile deliberately avoids converting it into an unsupported family-friendliness score.
That layer breaks the citywide income, rent, and home-value medians into smaller Census geographies, which can reveal differences that one municipal median necessarily hides. A tract is a statistical area, not a locally defined neighborhood or a promise about conditions on a particular block. Start with the city profile for the broad comparison, then use the tract layer to test whether the same housing and income pattern is consistent across the city. Large within-city spreads are a reason to avoid treating any citywide median as a universal resident experience.
These joined records add useful context, but they do not need another full-size panel. Each remains a separate measure with its own geography and source boundary.
Housing and income
How far does income reach against housing in Franklin?
The home-value-to-income reference sits in a middle range: the ACS median home value is 3.1 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 11.0%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
This is a citywide price-to-income reference, not a mortgage-affordability test; it does not include interest rates, taxes, insurance, household size, or an individual buyer's down payment. Income and home value move within the same broad scale here. The useful next check is not a generic affordability label, but whether similar-size cities offer a materially different income, housing, or commute trade-off.
Household income
$55,552
Home value
$170,400
Value / income
3.1×
City-level Census ACS 2023 medians. The ratio divides two separate medians and is descriptive only.
Is Franklin growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
Recent estimates point upward. Growth can increase housing demand and service needs, but the permit record must move in the same direction before calling it a supply response; the two series measure different things.
Census PEP estimates show the population grew by +546 residents from 2020 to 2025, a +5.3% change. No comparable local building-permit series is available here, so population change should not be read as a housing-supply measure. PEP and ACS are different Census series, so the trend is kept separate from the headline ACS population.
Period change
+5.3%
2025 estimate
10,759
2020 estimate
10,213
Census Population Estimates Program, 2020–2025; permit context uses Census BPS.
What does the journey to work look like in Franklin?
Mode share answers how workers usually travel; it does not measure congestion, reliability, distance to a particular job, or the quality of transit service. No single mode completely explains the work trip here. The mix is more useful than a one-number commute grade, especially when comparing places where transit, walking, and remote work divide the non-driving share differently.
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 76.1%. A reliable mean commute time is not available for this row, so the mode shares carry the comparison.
Public transit
0.0%
Work from home
5.3%
Drive alone
76.1%
City-level Census ACS commuting estimates covering 4,036 workers age 16+.
Below median income · poverty 11.0% (Above-median poverty)
Cost of Living Index (state)
90.2 (US=100)
Affordable · BEA RPP 2024, Kentucky average
D
City profile score · Franklin, KY
46/100
5 published dimensions · ACS/FBI 2023
Comparative score against U.S. cities with population of 1,000 or more on Census ACS medians
(income, poverty, bachelor's share, cost of living) and FBI UCR violent-crime rates when
published. Higher means a stronger standing on those published figures, not a livability
rating, not a recommendation to move, buy, or pick a "best" city. Missing inputs drop out
and redistribute weight.
How it is calculated.
Cost of living A
90.2 index
BEA state Regional Price Parities index (100 ≈ national average); lower is stronger on this axis. Same value for every city in the state.
Violent crime C+
142 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Poverty rate F
11.0%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Household income F
$55,552
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Bachelor's+ share F
13.4%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Franklin profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Cost of living: 85/100 (A) · 90.2 index
Violent crime: 60/100 (C+) · 142 /100k
Poverty rate: 36/100 (F) · 11.0%
Household income: 28/100 (F) · $55,552
Bachelor's+ share: 16/100 (F) · 13.4%
Where Franklin sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Franklin's median home value and FBI crime rate plotted with similar-size and
same-state peers (padded with large cities when the peer set is thin). The second
read: pricey does not always mean safer, check which quadrant this city lands in.
Census ACS median home value vs FBI UCR crime rate - Franklin highlighted among 10 peers.Read the chart values
Franklin, KY (this city): home $170,400, crime 1,023/100k
Vernal, UT : home $234,200, crime 3,322/100k
Elkhorn, WI : home $255,300, crime 597/100k
Carroll, IA : home $184,100, crime 1,018/100k
Raymondville, TX : home $48,200, crime 2,852/100k
La Grange, KY : home $268,000, crime 978/100k
Versailles, KY : home $257,600, crime 826/100k
Paris, KY : home $182,100, crime 935/100k
Alexandria, KY : home $253,400, crime 779/100k
Mayfield, KY : home $114,400, crime 2,088/100k
How does Franklin compare to other US cities?
Where Franklin sits among all US cities (population 1,000+) on each measure, computed live from Census and FBI data.
Household income28% higher than other cities
Home value34% pricier than other cities
Median rent10% pricier than other cities
Safety63% safer than other cities
"Safer than" reflects total crime rate from FBI UCR; the others use Census ACS estimates.
National percentiles can mask local variation. Looking only at Kentucky, Franklin ranks #115 of 181 Kentucky cities by lowest crime rate - a narrower, more locally useful cut than the national comparison above.
How we calculate these percentiles & ranks
Each percentile compares Franklin against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Kentucky only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Kentucky-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Franklin near the bottom of Kentucky's cities
Among the 520 Kentucky cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Franklin ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Franklin only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#247 of 485
49th percentile in Kentucky
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 520
0th percentile in Kentucky
Median Home Value
#187 of 484
61st percentile in Kentucky
Poverty Rate
#259 of 519
49th percentile in Kentucky
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#332 of 520
36th percentile in Kentucky
How in-state ranks are ordered
Ranked by raw value (highest first); a higher rank is not automatically "better" for every measure, see each metric's own context above. This is a comparison within Kentucky only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
28th percentile nationally for median household income · 63rd percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Franklin's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Franklin's percentile rank on 3 favorable-direction measures (income, affordability, safety) vs. every tracked US city -- higher on every axis is more favorable. Not a composite quality score, just the arithmetic mean of the axes shown.
How Franklin's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$170,400Among the most affordablemore affordable than 66% of 15,600 US cities
Show national distribution
Each bar is a $25K-wide band; taller bars hold more US cities. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count, share, and where it sits relative to this entry.
Source U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year Estimates · 2023
Franklin's home-value-to-income ratio: 3.1×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
moderate
3.0–5.0×
National rank
#7,044 of 15,516
More affordable than 55% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#1,005 of 3,317
Small cities (10,000–49,999)
At 3.1×, Franklin sits in the moderate band:
national rank #7,044 of 15,516 and #1,005 of 3,317small cities (10,000–49,999).
Income and home value move in the same broad scale; check same-state peers before treating the multiple as an advantage or a warning.
How this ratio is calculated
Ratio = Census ACS 2023 median home value ÷ median household income for cities with both fields and population ≥ 1,000.
Rank 1 = lowest ratio (most compact). Bands match the fleet affordability thresholds used on guides (<3.0 / 3.0–5.0 / >5.0).
This is not a mortgage payment estimate and does not include rates, taxes, insurance, or down payment.
Income distribution context
$55,552Franklin, KY median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Franklin, KY median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Franklin, KY.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)13.4%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)11.0%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)50.8%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
10,254
Median Income
$55,552
Median Home Value
$170,400
Median Age
34.4
Poverty Rate
11.0%
Labor force participation
50.8%
Bachelor's Degree+
13.4%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
1023.1
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
142.1
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
881.0
per 100,000 residents
Crime reporting caveat
Reflects incidents reported to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program — agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies by jurisdiction and year, so this reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score. Not adjusted for tourism, commuter, or daytime population.
Schools
Total Schools
6
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Franklin's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
10,213 residents
2021
10,260 residents
2022
10,342 residents
2023
10,499 residents
2024
10,571 residents
2025
10,759 residents
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Drive Alone
76.1%
Carpool
14.7%
Public Transit
0.0%
Walk
3.4%
Work from Home
5.3%
Based on 4,036 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Kentucky statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $225
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Kentucky at $225 (electricity about $115 , water and sewer about $40 ).
These are Kentucky statewide averages, not a meter reading for Franklin. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Kentucky's BEA cost-of-living index is 90.2 (Well Below Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Franklin is $984/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Kentucky statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 44.2 / 100 (Low).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Kentucky statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Franklin sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Franklin compares to similar-size Kentucky cities
Same-state peer method
Closest same-state population matches, not geographic neighbors. Population + median household income come from Census Bureau ACS 5-year B01001 and B19013.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year 2023, FBI UCR, NCES CCD, Census ACS B08301/B08136, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023, BEA Regional Price Parities 2024, HUD Fair Market Rents 2026, FEMA National Risk Index.