Households and income, in dated snapshots

2000 — 2024

The population divided into households, and what the households earned — three snapshots, each dated, none of them interchangeable: At the 2000 census the city's 205,727 people formed 83,333 households, an average of 2.41 persons per household; the median household income, measured on 1999 earnings, was $36,518, and per capita income $18,517. Allen County the same year held 331,849 people in 128,745 households. At the 2010 census the city counted 101,585 households and an average household size of 2.44, with a median age of 34.5 years — the household count had grown 22 percent in a decade in which annexation and the housing boom did the work, while household size, after a century of shrinkage, ticked slightly upward on the strength of the city's new immigrant families.

The current snapshot is the American Community Survey's, and it is an estimate with margins, not a count: the ACS 2024 one-year estimates give the city 112,191 households at 2.4 persons per household, a median household income of $61,436, per capita income of $35,220 and a median age of 35.2. The nominal income figures are not adjusted for inflation and are printed as each survey published them — the honest comparisons across the snapshots are the structural ones: a city whose population grew 28 percent between 2000 and 2024's survey while its household size stood still, and whose households therefore multiplied by a third, from 83,333 to about 112,000. County households followed the same curve at larger scale: 128,745 in 2000, and 144,383 in the 2015 American Community Survey used by the region's 2040 transportation plan.

Sources:

1. U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 — Fort Wayne city: 83,333 households, 2.41 persons per household, median household income $36,518 (1999), per capita income $18,517 (Census 2000 Summary Files, as carried in the Bureau's State and County QuickFacts); Allen County: 331,849 people in 128,745 households.
2. U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2010 — Fort Wayne city: 101,585 households, average household size 2.44, median age 34.5.
3. U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024 one-year estimates (via Census Reporter) — Fort Wayne city: 112,191 households (±2,798), 2.4 persons per household, median household income $61,436 (±$3,743), per capita income $35,220, median age 35.2.
4. Northeastern Indiana Regional Coordinating Council, 2040 Transportation Plan, chapter 2 — Allen County households of 144,383 in the 2015 American Community Survey.