Only four Mississippi counties sit below US median poverty
Mississippi has 82 counties. In 78 of them, the share of residents below the poverty line runs above the middle county in the country, which reports 13.2 per cent. Of the 46 states with ten or more counties, no state has a higher share of its counties above that mark. 83.7 per cent of the state's 2,951,438 residents live in one of those 78 counties.
That makes Mississippi a useful test of a habit most plans have, which is to read one number per place. Read the national comparison and every county in the state looks alike. Read the state figure and almost no county looks like it. Both readings are wrong, in opposite directions.
The four counties below the national middle
Only four of the 82 report poverty below 13.2 per cent, and none of the four is unusual by national standards.
- DeSoto County, 10.0 per cent poverty on a median household income of $82,980, with 188,598 residents. It is the state's lowest rate and still only the 771st lowest of the 3,142 counties in the 50 states.
- Rankin County, 10.0 per cent on $77,454.
- Itawamba County, 10.8 per cent on $59,508.
- Madison County, 11.0 per cent on $78,794, and 48.9 per cent of adults hold a degree against a national county middle of 21.4 per cent.
Between them the four hold 481,061 people, 16.3 per cent of the state, and 8.7 per cent of its residents in poverty. So there is no version of county selection inside Mississippi that reaches a genuinely low-poverty market. The lowest-poverty county available, DeSoto, is a middling county nationally and holds 6.4 per cent of the state's residents.
The state figure is wrong the other way
Mississippi reports 19.2 per cent poverty across its population, and its median county reports 21.0 per cent. The counties themselves run from 10.0 per cent to 38.0 per cent, a band 28 points wide. Holmes County sits at the top with 38.0 per cent, the 9th highest rate in the country, on a median household income of $29,434. Nine counties report 30 per cent or more; together they hold 5.4 per cent of the state's people and 9.4 per cent of its residents in poverty.
The state's largest county is not a moderating case either. Hinds County, 222,494 residents, reports 21.6 per cent, above the state figure and the 342nd highest of 3,142 counties. A single state number set at 19.2 per cent would be too low for the state's biggest market and far too high for the four counties above.
Income orders the counties differently
Nine of the 82 counties report median household income above the national county middle of $63,672. The state's median county reports $48,207, 24.3 per cent below that middle, and $26,910 per person against $33,954 nationally. Household income and poverty do not rank the counties in the same order, and one county shows why a high figure needs reading before it is used. Oktibbeha County reports 45.8 per cent of adults with a degree, more than double the national county middle, alongside 28.6 per cent poverty, the 80th highest in the country. Attainment and income point opposite ways in the same place.
What this changes for a plan
Two decisions usually rest on a figure like this: where to spend, and what to assume about the people there. Both go wrong on a single number. Broadband is a plain example. 91.6 per cent of households in DeSoto County hold a broadband subscription, against 65.7 per cent in Holmes County and a national county middle of 85.3 per cent. A digital-first plan built on the state figure would be pitched at neither.
Reading 82 counties on income, poverty, attainment and connection at once is the part that used to be slow, which is why one headline rate per state became the normal shortcut. It is a poor shortcut in a state whose counties sit 28 points apart. This kind of place-based analysis is what the figures are actually for.
Cambium AI builds synthetic populations from this same public data, so a research or marketing team can hold every county in a state side by side before a budget is set. The figures here come from the American Community Survey, the Census Bureau's annual household survey, and how that survey is turned into a population is set out in the methodology.
Data source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Estimates
