Poorest Cities In Iowa For 2023

Iowa brings to mind images of Des Moines, beautiful landscapes, and some of the best people you’ll find in the good ole US of A.

However, like all states, Iowa has certain places that are going on hard times. These Iowa places have an above average percent of people that are living in poverty, out of work, or not making as much as they should be.

With all the talk about income inequality going on around the country, we thought it prudent to take a look at the places in each state that are struggling to make it even as the economy continues to improve. So we set our sites on bringing attention to the poorest places in Iowa.

To do so, we analyzed the newest Census data from the American Community Survey for the 83 places in Iowa with more than 5,000 people.

Again, this isn’t a commentary on the people that live there or the vibrant culture and traditions of these places. Instead, it’s just a look at the facts.

What’s the poorst city in Iowa? According to the facts, Centerville is the poorest place in Iowa for 2023.

Rich people more your cup of tea? Feel free to check out the best places in Iowa or the most dangerous.

For more on how we calculated the top ten, and for more information about these places, read on.

If you’re looking for something more national, check out the poorest states in America or the poorest cities in America.

For more Iowa reading, check out:

• Best Places To Live In Iowa
• Cheapest Places To Live In Iowa
• Most Dangerous Cities In Iowa

Next 10 Cities

Methodology: How We Determined The Poorest Places In Iowa for 2023

The first thing that comes to most people’s minds when they think about determining the poorest places is to simply the poverty rate. That is, the number of people living below a federally established level of income for a household of a certain size.

However, we don’t think that one statistic wholly encompasses what it means to be one of the “poorest places”. So we looked at this set of criteria from the newly released 2017-2021 American Community Survey:

• Poverty Level
• Median Household Income adjusted for the cost of living
• Unemployment Rate

The “median household income adjusted for the cost of living” attempts to gauge how expensive it is to live in a place and how that impacts the quality of life. For example, a town might have fewer people living below the official poverty line, but the cost of living is so high they’d still feel poor.

The unemployment rate tries to capture the prospects for improvement in the city or town. If more people are employed, the brighter the future looks and vice versa.

After we collected the data for all 83 places with more than 5,000 people in Iowa, we ranked each place from 1 to 83 for each of the criteria, with 1 being the poorest.

We then averaged all the rankings for a place into a “Poor Score” with the place having the lowest overall Poor Score, Centerville, crowned the “Poorest Place In Iowa For 2023”.

Summary: The Poorest Places In Iowa For 2023

Like we said earlier, when we set out to identify the poorest places in Iowa, we weren’t sure what we’d encounter, but it ended up being some of the best places to live in Iowa.

When you look at the data, the cities and places mentioned above meet the criteria for being at the very bottom of the income ladder for everyone that lives there.

If you’re curious enough, here are the richest cities in Iowa, according to data:

Richest: Bondurant
2nd Richest: Sioux Center
3rd Richest: Pella

For more Iowa reading, check out:

• Richest Cities In Iowa
• Safest Places In Iowa
• Worst Places To Live In Iowa
• Most Expensive Places To Live In Iowa

Detailed List Of The Poorest Places To Live In Iowa