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Place dossier plate
SheetMO-BETHANY-MO · Bethany, MO 3,164 pop · income 14th pct · 3 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 Bethany
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Bethany on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Experiment · lowest
30,745
Experiment · lowest
30,745 median HH income
20.9% of the leader · rank #1
Alford · near
46,009
Alford · near
46,009 median HH income
31.2% of the leader · rank #2
Delta · near
46,010
Delta · near
46,010 median HH income
31.2% of the leader · rank #3
Meadville · near
46,012
Meadville · near
46,012 median HH income
31.2% of the leader · rank #4
Bethany · this city
46,016
Bethany · this city
46,016 median HH income
31.2% of the leader · rank #5
Shippenville · near
46,016
Shippenville · near
46,016 median HH income
31.2% of the leader · rank #6
Sleepy Hollow · highest
147,407
Sleepy Hollow · highest
147,407 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 Bethany 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: 3,164.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Bethany - the verdict
Bethany ranks in the 14th percentile for household income and the 76th percentile for safety nationally, out of every US city with at least 1,000 residents. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
14th
percentile, household income
17th
percentile, home value
7th
percentile, median rent
76th
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: Bethany, MO
Census ACS 2023 estimates count 3,164 residents in Bethany, a small town within Missouri. Households in Bethany report a median income of $46,016 per year, in the lower quartile of U.S. cities for household income, with a poverty rate of 12.2%. Typical homes in Bethany are valued around $119,700, and the median resident age is 42.6 years. About 22.1% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, while 54.1% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
Housing supply pressure shows in Census Building Permit Survey data: 5 residential units were authorized in 2024 (Low Activity). Bethany reports a comparatively low crime rate: FBI UCR figures show 717.2 crimes per 100,000 residents, below the national average (reporting is voluntary across agencies, so treat this as reporting activity rather than a definitive danger score). The annual average temperature per NOAA climate normals runs 51.8°F with 39.1 inches of precipitation per year and 21.2 inches of snowfall.
Living costs in Missouri run below the national norm: the state registers 90.8 on a 100-equals-national-average index (Well Below Average) per BEA Regional Price Parities 2024. Statewide, HUD pegs Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom unit at $972 monthly. Statewide, average monthly utility bills in Missouri run around $219, per EIA 2023 residential energy data. Natural-hazard exposure scores 50.6 out of 100 on FEMA's National Risk Index (Low).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Bethany'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 schools and households to housing and income to work and mobility to within-city variation to climate and hazard context to comparison shortlist to population change to reported crime; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Bethany, city-specific coverage includes matched public-school count, annual population history, commute-mode shares, local building permits, FBI reported-crime rates, within-city Census tract profiles.
All six city-specific enrichment layers used by this profile are present.
Question 1
What does the education layer cover for Bethany?
The NCES join finds 3 public schools within the city match. 22.1% 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.
How far does income reach against housing in Bethany?
The home-value-to-income reference sits in a middle range: the ACS median home value is 2.6 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 12.2%, 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.
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.
Which cities make useful reference points for Bethany?
Within Missouri, the closest population matches are Monroe City (3,162 residents, $52,883 income); Byrnes Mill (3,168 residents, $87,663 income); Country Club (3,171 residents, $82,614 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Eden, NY (3,164 residents); Nags Head, NC (3,164 residents); Burlington, CO (3,165 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.
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.
Work and mobility
What does the journey to work look like in Bethany?
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 74.7%. 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
11.7%
Drive alone
74.7%
City-level Census ACS commuting estimates covering 1,226 workers age 16+.
NOAA normals put the annual mean temperature at 51.8°F, with 39.1 inches of precipitation and 21.2 inches of annual snowfall. FEMA's state-averaged National Risk Index score for Missouri is 50.6 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.
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.
Mean temperature
51.8°F
Annual precipitation
39.1 in
FEMA risk index (state avg)
50.6
NOAA Climate Normals and FEMA National Risk Index (state-averaged on PlainCities). Hazard context is not address-level.
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 +46 residents from 2020 to 2025, a +1.6% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 5 housing units authorized in 2024. PEP and ACS are different Census series, so the trend is kept separate from the headline ACS population.
Period change
+1.6%
2025 estimate
2,956
2020 estimate
2,910
Census Population Estimates Program, 2020–2025; permit context uses Census BPS.
What can the FBI record say about safety in Bethany?
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 717.2 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, below the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 69% lower in arithmetic terms, but agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies.
Property rate
512.3
Violent rate
204.9
Total reported rate
717.2
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
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-
90.8 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 D
205 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Bachelor's+ share D
22.1%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Poverty rate F
12.2%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Household income F
$46,016
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Bethany profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Cost of living: 83/100 (A-) · 90.8 index
Violent crime: 47/100 (D) · 205 /100k
Bachelor's+ share: 40/100 (D) · 22.1%
Poverty rate: 31/100 (F) · 12.2%
Household income: 15/100 (F) · $46,016
Where Bethany sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Bethany'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 - Bethany highlighted among 27 peers.Read the chart values
Bethany, MO (this city): home $119,700, crime 717/100k
Nags Head, NC : home $451,100, crime 3,674/100k
Burlington, CO : home $199,000, crime 1,573/100k
Sleepy Hollow, IL : home $365,200, crime 290/100k
Virden, IL : home $98,800, crime 1,811/100k
Byrnes Mill, MO : home $249,500, crime 910/100k
Louisiana, MO : home $81,100, crime 1,042/100k
New York, NY : home $751,700, crime 3,039/100k
Los Angeles, CA : home $879,500, crime 2,212/100k
Chicago, IL : home $315,200, crime 4,012/100k
Houston, TX : home $253,400, crime 5,442/100k
Phoenix, AZ : home $381,900, crime 3,125/100k
Philadelphia, PA : home $232,400, crime 5,457/100k
San Antonio, TX : home $219,700, crime 5,218/100k
San Diego, CA : home $848,500, crime 2,082/100k
Dallas, TX : home $295,300, crime 4,010/100k
San Jose, CA : home $1,187,800, crime 3,195/100k
Austin, TX : home $512,700, crime 3,709/100k
Fort Worth, TX : home $277,300, crime 3,158/100k
Columbus, OH : home $234,500, crime 3,088/100k
Indianapolis, IN : home $207,000, crime 4,214/100k
San Francisco, CA : home $1,380,500, crime 4,526/100k
Seattle, WA : home $912,100, crime 5,783/100k
Denver, CO : home $586,700, crime 5,755/100k
Oklahoma City, OK : home $215,100, crime 3,570/100k
El Paso, TX : home $171,700, crime 1,772/100k
Washington, DC : home $724,600, crime 4,514/100k
How does Bethany compare to other US cities?
Here's how Bethany stacks up against the full field of US cities (population 1,000+), computed live from Census and FBI data.
Household income14% higher than other cities
Home value17% pricier than other cities
Median rent7% pricier than other cities
Safety76% safer than other cities
"Safer than" reflects total crime rate from FBI UCR; the others use Census ACS estimates.
Zoom in to just Missouri and the picture shifts: Bethany ranks #43 of 234 Missouri cities by lowest crime rate, a different read than the national percentile above.
How we calculate these percentiles & ranks
Each percentile compares Bethany against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Missouri only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Missouri-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Bethany near the bottom of Missouri's cities
Among the 875 Missouri cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Bethany ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Bethany only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#577 of 842
31st percentile in Missouri
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 875
0th percentile in Missouri
Median Home Value
#420 of 833
50th percentile in Missouri
Poverty Rate
#347 of 875
60th percentile in Missouri
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#266 of 875
69th percentile in Missouri
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 Missouri only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
14th percentile nationally for median household income · 76th percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Bethany's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Bethany'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 Bethany's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$119,700Among the most affordablemore affordable than 83% 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
Bethany's home-value-to-income ratio: 2.6×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
affordable
< 3.0×
National rank
#4,509 of 15,516
More affordable than 71% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#4,013 of 11,323
Micro cities (under 10,000)
At 2.6×, Bethany sits in the affordable band:
national rank #4,509 of 15,516 and #4,013 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
$46,016Bethany, MO median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Bethany, MO median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Bethany, MO.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)22.1%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)12.2%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)54.1%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
3,164
Median Income
$46,016
Median Home Value
$119,700
Median Age
42.6
Poverty Rate
12.2%
Labor force participation
54.1%
Bachelor's Degree+
22.1%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
717.2
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
204.9
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
512.3
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
51.8°F
Annual Precipitation
39.1"
Annual Snowfall
21.2"
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
Bethany's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
2,910 residents
2021
2,917 residents
2022
2,925 residents
2023
2,930 residents
2024
2,936 residents
2025
2,956 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
🏗️ Low Activity
Total Permits (2024)
5
housing units authorized
Single-Family
5
detached homes
Multifamily
0
apartments & condos
Supply Intensity
1.6
permits per 1,000 residents
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
0
0
0
-
2020
0
0
0
-
2021
0
0
0
-
2022
0
0
0
-
2023
2
0
2
$0.1M
2024
5
5
0
$0.6M
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Drive Alone
74.7%
Carpool
11.1%
Public Transit
0.0%
Walk
0.6%
Work from Home
11.7%
Other
1.9%
Based on 1,226 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Missouri statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $219
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Missouri at $219 (electricity about $105 , water and sewer about $42 ).
These are Missouri statewide averages, not a meter reading for Bethany. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Missouri's BEA cost-of-living index is 90.8 (Well Below Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Bethany is $972/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Missouri statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 50.6 / 100 (Low).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Missouri statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Bethany sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Bethany compares to similar-size Missouri 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.