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Place dossier plate
SheetMI-HILLSDALE-MI · Hillsdale, MI 8,013 pop · income 16th pct · 13 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 Hillsdale
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Hillsdale on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Newport · lowest
32,693
Newport · lowest
32,693 median HH income
19.0% of the leader · rank #1
Barnes City · near
47,813
Barnes City · near
47,813 median HH income
27.8% of the leader · rank #2
Oberlin · near
47,813
Oberlin · near
47,813 median HH income
27.8% of the leader · rank #3
Hillsdale · this city
47,817
Hillsdale · this city
47,817 median HH income
27.8% of the leader · rank #4
Cumberland · near
47,819
Cumberland · near
47,819 median HH income
27.8% of the leader · rank #5
Ponchatoula · near
47,821
Ponchatoula · near
47,821 median HH income
27.8% of the leader · rank #6
Timnath · highest
172,206
Timnath · highest
172,206 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 Hillsdale 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: 8,013.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Hillsdale - the verdict
Measured against every US city with at least 1,000 residents, Hillsdale lands in the 16th percentile for household income and the 67th percentile for safety. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
16th
percentile, household income
21st
percentile, home value
32nd
percentile, median rent
67th
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: Hillsdale, MI
Hillsdale is a small town in Michigan, home to 8,013 residents per U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023 estimates. Hillsdale households earn a median of $47,817 annually, in the lower quartile of U.S. cities for household income, with a poverty rate of 16.3%. Typical homes in Hillsdale are valued around $131,300, and the median resident age is 30.1 years. 25.7% of adults here have a bachelor's degree or higher; 59.8% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
Hillsdale reports a comparatively low crime rate: FBI UCR reporting places total crime at 926.6 incidents per 100,000 residents, below the national average (voluntary agency reporting, reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score). NOAA puts Hillsdale's yearly average temperature at 47.9°F with 39.5 inches of precipitation per year and 44.1 inches of snowfall.
Living costs in Michigan run below the national norm: on BEA's 100-equals-national-average cost index, Michigan scores 96.2 (Below Average), per the 2024 Regional Price Parities release. Statewide, HUD pegs Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom unit at $1,113 monthly. Statewide, average monthly utility bills in Michigan run around $238, per EIA 2023 residential energy data. Natural-hazard exposure scores 49.6 out of 100 on FEMA's National Risk Index (Low).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Hillsdale'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 within-city variation to housing and income to comparison shortlist to schools and households to population change to climate and hazard context to reported crime to work and mobility; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Hillsdale, city-specific coverage includes within-city Census tract profiles, matched public-school count, FBI reported-crime rates, commute-mode shares, 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
What can 13 Census tracts reveal inside Hillsdale?
PlainCities matches 13 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.
How far does income reach against housing in Hillsdale?
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 2.7 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 16.3%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
Which cities make useful reference points for Hillsdale?
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 Michigan, the closest population matches are Grand Blanc (7,995 residents, $67,284 income); Whitmore Lake (8,083 residents, $78,038 income); Three Rivers (7,936 residents, $48,852 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Carnegie, PA (8,015 residents); Kaufman, TX (8,010 residents); Newport, AR (8,019 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.
What does the education layer cover for Hillsdale?
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 3 public schools within the city match. 25.7% 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.
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.
Population change
Is Hillsdale growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
Census PEP estimates show the population declined by -27 residents from 2020 to 2025, a -0.3% 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.
The recent population line is broadly flat. That makes the composition of change more important than the headline count: housing turnover, household size, and age structure can shift even when the total barely moves.
2020 estimate
8,029
2025 estimate
8,002
Period change
-0.3%
Census Population Estimates Program, 2020–2025; permit context uses Census BPS.
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 47.9°F, with 39.5 inches of precipitation and 44.1 inches of annual snowfall. FEMA's state-averaged National Risk Index score for Michigan is 49.6 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)
49.6
Annual precipitation
39.5 in
Mean temperature
47.9°F
NOAA Climate Normals and FEMA National Risk Index (state-averaged on PlainCities). Hazard context is not address-level.
What can the FBI record say about safety in Hillsdale?
The joined FBI UCR record reports 926.6 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, below the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 59% lower 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
926.6
Violent rate
288.0
Property rate
638.6
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
What does the journey to work look like in Hillsdale?
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 63.7%. A reliable mean commute time is not available for this row, so the mode shares carry the comparison.
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.
Drive alone
63.7%
Work from home
6.6%
Public transit
0.3%
City-level Census ACS commuting estimates covering 3,830 workers age 16+.
Near national cost · BEA RPP 2024, Michigan average
F
City profile score · Hillsdale, MI
34/100
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 C
96.2 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-
25.7%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Violent crime F
288 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Poverty rate F
16.3%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Household income F
$47,817
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Hillsdale profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Cost of living: 57/100 (C) · 96.2 index
Bachelor's+ share: 51/100 (C-) · 25.7%
Violent crime: 35/100 (F) · 288 /100k
Poverty rate: 20/100 (F) · 16.3%
Household income: 17/100 (F) · $47,817
Where Hillsdale sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Hillsdale'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 - Hillsdale highlighted among 10 peers.Read the chart values
Hillsdale, MI (this city): home $131,300, crime 927/100k
Carnegie, PA : home $168,800, crime 1,199/100k
Kaufman, TX : home $195,900, crime 1,606/100k
Newport, AR : home $132,200, crime 1,725/100k
Timnath, CO : home $717,300, crime 938/100k
Parkville, MO : home $557,100, crime 853/100k
Grand Blanc, MI : home $228,000, crime 902/100k
Big Rapids, MI : home $134,200, crime 1,819/100k
St. Joseph, MI : home $271,100, crime 1,977/100k
Grand Ledge, MI : home $189,300, crime 707/100k
How does Hillsdale compare to other US cities?
Here's how Hillsdale stacks up against the full field of US cities (population 1,000+), computed live from Census and FBI data.
Household income16% higher than other cities
Home value21% pricier than other cities
Median rent32% pricier than other cities
Safety67% safer than other cities
"Safer than" reflects total crime rate from FBI UCR; the others use Census ACS estimates.
Zoom in to just Michigan and the picture shifts: Hillsdale ranks #94 of 254 Michigan cities by lowest crime rate, a different read than the national percentile above.
How we calculate these percentiles & ranks
Each percentile compares Hillsdale against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Michigan only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Michigan-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Hillsdale near the bottom of Michigan's cities
Among the 727 Michigan cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Hillsdale ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Hillsdale only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#559 of 718
22nd percentile in Michigan
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 727
0th percentile in Michigan
Median Home Value
#417 of 721
42nd percentile in Michigan
Poverty Rate
#133 of 727
82nd percentile in Michigan
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#253 of 727
65th percentile in Michigan
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 Michigan only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
16th percentile nationally for median household income · 67th percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Hillsdale's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Hillsdale'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 Hillsdale's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$131,300Among the most affordablemore affordable than 79% 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
Hillsdale's home-value-to-income ratio: 2.7×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
affordable
< 3.0×
National rank
#5,294 of 15,516
More affordable than 66% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#4,618 of 11,323
Micro cities (under 10,000)
At 2.7×, Hillsdale sits in the affordable band:
national rank #5,294 of 15,516 and #4,618 of 11,323micro cities (under 10,000).
The multiple is comparatively compact among tracked cities, but a low ratio can still coexist with slow demand or household-level hardship.
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
$47,817Hillsdale, MI median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Hillsdale, MI median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Hillsdale, MI.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)25.7%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)16.3%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)59.8%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
8,013
Median Income
$47,817
Median Home Value
$131,300
Median Age
30.1
Poverty Rate
16.3%
Labor force participation
59.8%
Bachelor's Degree+
25.7%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
926.6
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
288.0
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
638.6
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
47.9°F
Annual Precipitation
39.5"
Annual Snowfall
44.1"
Schools
Total Schools
3
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Hillsdale's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
8,029 residents
2021
7,971 residents
2022
8,023 residents
2023
8,003 residents
2024
8,005 residents
2025
8,002 residents
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Drive Alone
63.7%
Carpool
9.1%
Public Transit
0.3%
Walk
16.4%
Work from Home
6.6%
Other
3.9%
Based on 3,830 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Michigan statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $238
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Michigan at $238 (electricity about $105 , water and sewer about $48 ).
These are Michigan statewide averages, not a meter reading for Hillsdale. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Michigan's BEA cost-of-living index is 96.2 (Below Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Hillsdale is $1,113/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Michigan statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 49.6 / 100 (Low).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Michigan statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Hillsdale sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Hillsdale compares to similar-size Michigan 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 ACS B08301/B08136, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023, BEA Regional Price Parities 2024, HUD Fair Market Rents 2026, FEMA National Risk Index.