Side-by-side metrics and state or size-class ranks use the same Census and FBI fields shown on this profile. Results stay in the URL so you can bookmark or share them.
Place dossier plate
SheetTX-SHEPHERD-TX · Shepherd, TX 2,124 pop · income 17th pct
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 Shepherd
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Shepherd on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
San Augustine · lowest
32,140
San Augustine · lowest
32,140 median HH income
27.7% of the leader · rank #1
Geneva · near
48,357
Geneva · near
48,357 median HH income
41.7% of the leader · rank #2
Milton · near
48,365
Milton · near
48,365 median HH income
41.8% of the leader · rank #3
Walterboro · near
48,366
Walterboro · near
48,366 median HH income
41.8% of the leader · rank #4
Shepherd · this city
48,368
Shepherd · this city
48,368 median HH income
41.8% of the leader · rank #5
Windsor · near
48,371
Windsor · near
48,371 median HH income
41.8% of the leader · rank #6
Penngrove · highest
115,826
Penngrove · highest
115,826 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 Shepherd 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: 2,124.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Shepherd - the verdict
Measured against every US city with at least 1,000 residents, Shepherd lands in the 17th percentile for household income and the 83rd percentile for safety. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
17th
percentile, household income
25th
percentile, home value
40th
percentile, median rent
83rd
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: Shepherd, TX
Texas's Shepherd is a small town, with 2,124 residents per the latest Census Bureau ACS figures. The typical household in Shepherd brings in $48,368 a year, in the lower quartile of U.S. cities for household income, with a poverty rate of 16.7%. Typical homes in Shepherd are valued around $144,100, and the median resident age is 37.0 years. Educational attainment runs 7.8% of adults with a bachelor's degree or higher. Separately, 46.0% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
Housing supply pressure shows in Census Building Permit Survey data: 9 residential units were authorized in 2024 (Low Activity). Shepherd reports a comparatively low crime rate: per-100,000 total crime stands at 556.4 in FBI UCR data, below the national average (a voluntary reporting program, read this as reporting activity, not a definitive danger score).
Texas tracks close to the national cost-of-living baseline: on BEA's 100-equals-national-average cost index, Texas scores 97.1 (Near Average), per the 2024 Regional Price Parities release. HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in this state is $1,149 per month. Monthly utility costs average around $223 across Texas, per EIA 2023 residential energy estimates. On FEMA's National Risk Index, this area rates 49.0 out of 100 for natural-hazard exposure (Low).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Shepherd'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 work and mobility to population change; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Shepherd, city-specific coverage includes annual population history, matched public-school count, local building permits, FBI reported-crime rates, commute-mode shares.
No matched row is reported here for within-city Census tract profiles; the page leaves those layers out instead of substituting a statewide or national value.
Question 1
Which cities make useful reference points for Shepherd?
Within Texas, the closest population matches are Odem (2,128 residents, $61,094 income); Meadowlakes (2,113 residents, $79,635 income); Jefferson (2,111 residents, $40,865 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Clifton Springs, NY (2,124 residents); Amherst, VA (2,124 residents); Danville, AR (2,123 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 Shepherd?
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 556.4 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, below the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 76% lower in arithmetic terms, but agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies.
The NCES join finds 4 public schools within the city match. 7.8% 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 Shepherd?
The home-value-to-income reference sits in a middle range: the ACS median home value is 3.0 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 16.7%, 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.
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 Shepherd?
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 73.6%. 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
5.5%
Drive alone
73.6%
City-level Census ACS commuting estimates covering 740 workers age 16+.
Is Shepherd growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
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.
Census PEP estimates show the population declined by -150 residents from 2020 to 2025, a -7.2% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 9 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
-7.2%
2025 estimate
1,942
2020 estimate
2,092
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.
Violent crime A-
51 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Cost of living C-
97.1 index
BEA state Regional Price Parities index (100 ≈ national average); lower is stronger on this axis. Same value for every city in the state.
Poverty rate F
16.7%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Household income F
$48,368
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Bachelor's+ share F
7.8%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Shepherd profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Violent crime: 84/100 (A-) · 51 /100k
Cost of living: 53/100 (C-) · 97.1 index
Poverty rate: 19/100 (F) · 16.7%
Household income: 18/100 (F) · $48,368
Bachelor's+ share: 0/100 (F) · 7.8%
Where Shepherd sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Shepherd'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 - Shepherd highlighted among 27 peers.Read the chart values
Shepherd, TX (this city): home $144,100, crime 556/100k
Amherst, VA : home $213,300, crime 1,088/100k
Danville, AR : home $117,400, crime 805/100k
Cherryvale, KS : home $53,300, crime 2,038/100k
Jefferson, TX : home $143,800, crime 2,879/100k
San Augustine, TX : home $70,600, crime 972/100k
Bells, TX : home $208,000, crime 263/100k
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 Shepherd compare to other US cities?
Here's how Shepherd stacks up against the full field of US cities (population 1,000+), computed live from Census and FBI data.
Household income17% higher than other cities
Home value25% pricier than other cities
Median rent40% pricier than other cities
Safety83% safer than other cities
"Safer than" reflects total crime rate from FBI UCR; the others use Census ACS estimates.
A national percentile can hide a lot of local variation: narrowed to Texas alone, Shepherd ranks #112 of 624 Texas cities by lowest crime rate - a different, more locally useful comparison than stacking it against the entire country.
How we calculate these percentiles & ranks
Each percentile compares Shepherd against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Texas only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Texas-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Shepherd near the bottom of Texas's cities
Among the 1,663 Texas cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Shepherd ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Shepherd only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#1,175 of 1,520
23rd percentile in Texas
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 1,663
0th percentile in Texas
Median Home Value
#842 of 1,505
44th percentile in Texas
Poverty Rate
#427 of 1,663
74th percentile in Texas
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#1,369 of 1,663
17th percentile in Texas
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 Texas only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
17th percentile nationally for median household income · 83rd percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Shepherd's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Shepherd'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 Shepherd's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$144,100Among the most affordablemore affordable than 75% 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
Shepherd's home-value-to-income ratio: 3.0×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
affordable
< 3.0×
National rank
#6,584 of 15,516
More affordable than 58% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#5,588 of 11,323
Micro cities (under 10,000)
At 3.0×, Shepherd sits in the affordable band:
national rank #6,584 of 15,516 and #5,588 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
$48,368Shepherd, TX median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Shepherd, TX median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Shepherd, TX.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)7.8%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)16.7%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)46.0%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
2,124
Median Income
$48,368
Median Home Value
$144,100
Median Age
37.0
Poverty Rate
16.7%
Labor force participation
46.0%
Bachelor's Degree+
7.8%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
556.4
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
50.6
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
505.8
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
4
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Shepherd's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
2,092 residents
2021
2,002 residents
2022
2,018 residents
2023
2,030 residents
2024
1,975 residents
2025
1,942 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
🏗️ Low Activity
Total Permits (2024)
9
housing units authorized
Single-Family
9
detached homes
Multifamily
0
apartments & condos
Supply Intensity
4.2
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
2
2
0
$0.3M
2022
8
8
0
$2.0M
2023
5
5
0
$1.4M
2024
9
9
0
$2.6M
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Drive Alone
73.6%
Carpool
14.2%
Public Transit
0.0%
Walk
0.5%
Work from Home
5.5%
Other
6.2%
Based on 740 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Texas statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $223
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Texas at $223 (electricity about $130 , water and sewer about $48 ).
These are Texas statewide averages, not a meter reading for Shepherd. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Texas's BEA cost-of-living index is 97.1 (Near Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Shepherd is $1,149/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Texas statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 49.0 / 100 (Low).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Texas statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Shepherd sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Shepherd compares to similar-size Texas 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 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.