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Place dossier plate
SheetKY-PADUCAH-KY · Paducah, KY 26,894 pop · income 21st pct · 19 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 Paducah
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Paducah on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Henderson · lowest
47,176
Henderson · lowest
47,176 median HH income
47.8% of the leader · rank #1
Corsicana · near
51,240
Corsicana · near
51,240 median HH income
51.9% of the leader · rank #2
Paducah · this city
51,243
Paducah · this city
51,243 median HH income
51.9% of the leader · rank #3
Carolina · near
51,250
Carolina · near
51,250 median HH income
51.9% of the leader · rank #4
Toxey · near
51,250
Toxey · near
51,250 median HH income
51.9% of the leader · rank #5
Glacier View · near
51,250
Glacier View · near
51,250 median HH income
51.9% of the leader · rank #6
Independence · highest
98,653
Independence · highest
98,653 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 Paducah 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: 26,894.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Paducah - the verdict
Nationally, Paducah sits in the 21st percentile for household income and the 15th percentile for safety among US cities with a population of 1,000 or more. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
21st
percentile, household income
32nd
percentile, home value
10th
percentile, median rent
15th
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: Paducah, KY
Census ACS 2023 estimates count 26,894 residents in Paducah, a small city within Kentucky. Households in Paducah report a median income of $51,243 per year, in the lower quartile of U.S. cities for household income, with a poverty rate of 16.9%. Paducah's housing stock carries a median value of $164,600, and the median resident age is 43.2 years. About 28.4% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, while 57.9% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
In 2024, 92 residential building permits were authorized in Paducah (Building Boom), up 104% from five years earlier, per Census BPS data. Paducah's reported crime rate runs above the national norm: FBI UCR reporting places total crime at 3064.9 incidents per 100,000 residents, above the national average (voluntary agency reporting, reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score). NOAA climate normals record an annual average temperature of 58.8°F with 50.3 inches of precipitation per year and 8.9 inches of snowfall.
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. The average commute for Paducah workers runs 14.6 minutes, with 79.3% driving alone and 6.7% working from home. Natural-hazard exposure scores 44.2 out of 100 on FEMA's National Risk Index (Low).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Paducah'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 work and mobility to schools and households to reported crime to comparison shortlist to housing and income to within-city variation to climate and hazard context to population change; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Paducah, city-specific coverage includes within-city Census tract profiles, commute-mode shares, local building permits, FBI reported-crime rates, matched public-school count, annual population history.
All six city-specific enrichment layers used by this profile are present.
Question 1
What does the journey to work look like in Paducah?
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 79.3%. The reported mean trip to work is 14.6 minutes.
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.
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.
The NCES join finds 17 public schools within the city match. 28.4% 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.
Which cities make useful reference points for Paducah?
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.
Within Kentucky, the closest population matches are Henderson (27,994 residents, $47,176 income); Frankfort (28,452 residents, $54,438 income); Jeffersontown (28,988 residents, $78,185 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Oak Forest, IL (26,888 residents); Garden City, MI (26,910 residents); Plum, PA (26,873 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.
PlainCities matches 19 Census tracts to this city.
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.
Reported crime
What can the FBI record say about safety in Paducah?
The joined FBI UCR record reports 3064.9 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, above the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 34% higher in arithmetic terms, but agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies.
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.
Total reported rate
3064.9
Violent rate
270.4
Property rate
2794.5
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
How far does income reach against housing in Paducah?
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.
The home-value-to-income reference sits in a middle range: the ACS median home value is 3.2 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 16.9%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
Value / income
3.2×
Home value
$164,600
Household income
$51,243
City-level Census ACS 2023 medians. The ratio divides two separate medians and is descriptive only.
The two sources should not be blended into one comfort or safety score. Use the climate values for baseline conditions and the risk index as a prompt to inspect specific hazards, insurance, and local emergency guidance for a particular address.
NOAA normals put the annual mean temperature at 58.8°F, with 50.3 inches of precipitation and 8.9 inches of annual snowfall. FEMA's state-averaged National Risk Index score for Kentucky is 44.2 out of 100. Climate normals describe long-run weather; the FEMA score on PlainCities is a state average of county NRI inputs and combines hazards, exposure, vulnerability, and resilience.
FEMA risk index (state avg)
44.2
Annual precipitation
50.3 in
Mean temperature
58.8°F
NOAA Climate Normals and FEMA National Risk Index (state-averaged on PlainCities). Hazard context is not address-level.
Census PEP estimates show the population declined by -403 residents from 2020 to 2025, a -1.5% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 92 housing units authorized in 2024. PEP and ACS are different Census series, so the trend is kept separate from the headline ACS population.
Recent estimates point downward. A falling count can reflect migration, household size, annexation boundaries, or estimation noise, so it is a prompt to inspect the full series rather than a claim about local economic health.
2020 estimate
27,133
2025 estimate
26,730
Period change
-1.5%
Census Population Estimates Program, 2020–2025; permit context uses Census BPS.
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.
Bachelor's+ share C
28.4%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Violent crime F
270 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Household income F
$51,243
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Poverty rate F
16.9%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Paducah profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Cost of living: 85/100 (A) · 90.2 index
Bachelor's+ share: 55/100 (C) · 28.4%
Violent crime: 37/100 (F) · 270 /100k
Household income: 22/100 (F) · $51,243
Poverty rate: 19/100 (F) · 16.9%
Where Paducah sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Paducah'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 - Paducah highlighted among 11 peers.Read the chart values
Paducah, KY (this city): home $164,600, crime 3,065/100k
Oak Forest, IL : home $247,800, crime 527/100k
Garden City, MI : home $162,400, crime 1,054/100k
Plum, PA : home $218,600, crime 214/100k
Temple Terrace, FL : home $306,200, crime 2,069/100k
Henderson, KY : home $151,400, crime 2,134/100k
Frankfort, KY : home $171,600, crime 1,846/100k
Jeffersontown, KY : home $236,800, crime 2,381/100k
Independence, KY : home $240,500, crime 343/100k
Radcliff, KY : home $163,300, crime 2,171/100k
Hopkinsville, KY : home $140,200, crime 2,952/100k
How does Paducah compare to other US cities?
Where Paducah sits among all US cities (population 1,000+) on each measure, computed live from Census and FBI data.
Household income21% higher than other cities
Home value32% pricier than other cities
Median rent10% pricier than other cities
Safety15% 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, Paducah ranks #172 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 Paducah 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 Paducah near the bottom of Kentucky's cities
Among the 520 Kentucky cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Paducah ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Paducah only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#279 of 485
42nd percentile in Kentucky
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 520
0th percentile in Kentucky
Median Home Value
#198 of 484
59th percentile in Kentucky
Poverty Rate
#181 of 519
65th percentile in Kentucky
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#160 of 520
69th 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
21st percentile nationally for median household income · 15th percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Paducah's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Paducah'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 Paducah's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$164,600Among the most affordablemore affordable than 68% 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
Paducah's home-value-to-income ratio: 3.2×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
moderate
3.0–5.0×
National rank
#7,755 of 15,516
More affordable than 50% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#1,192 of 3,317
Small cities (10,000–49,999)
At 3.2×, Paducah sits in the moderate band:
national rank #7,755 of 15,516 and #1,192 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
$51,243Paducah, KY median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Paducah, 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 Paducah, KY.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)28.4%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)16.9%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)57.9%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
26,894
Median Income
$51,243
Median Home Value
$164,600
Median Age
43.2
Poverty Rate
16.9%
Labor force participation
57.9%
Bachelor's Degree+
28.4%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
3064.9
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
270.4
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
2794.5
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.
Climate
Avg Temperature
58.8°F
Annual Precipitation
50.3"
Annual Snowfall
8.9"
Schools
Total Schools
17
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Paducah's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
27,133 residents
2021
26,924 residents
2022
26,779 residents
2023
26,816 residents
2024
26,804 residents
2025
26,730 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
📈 Building Boom
Total Permits (2024)
92
housing units authorized
Single-Family
18
detached homes
Multifamily
74
apartments & condos
Supply Intensity
3.4
permits per 1,000 residents
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
45
19
26
$9.5M
2020
24
18
6
$4.5M
2021
53
15
38
$11.2M
2022
46
10
36
$6.6M
2023
31
10
21
$4.2M
2024
92
18
74
$8.6M
Permit volume increased 104% from 2019 to 2024.
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Average Commute Time
14.6 minutes
Drive Alone
79.3%
Carpool
7.5%
Public Transit
1.0%
Walk
2.6%
Work from Home
6.7%
Other
2.9%
Based on 12,440 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 Paducah. 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 Paducah 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 Paducah sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Paducah 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, NOAA Climate Normals, NCES CCD, Census BPS 2024, 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.