El CentroCA

The quick read

Reading El Centro, CA beyond the headline numbers

El Centro sits inside Imperial County, California, at roughly 32.79°N, -115.56°W. Its population of 43,956 and $53,082 median household income are the two most quoted figures, but in isolation they hide the shape of the city. A median home value of $323,100 paired with median rent of $1,052 is the starting point for a price-to-income read that tells you how stretched a typical household is before any other cost of living factor is considered. The 21.6% poverty rate next to that income figure is the better signal, two cities with identical medians can have very different lived realities depending on the income distribution underneath.

Health and healthcare access are the next layer most residents and prospective movers actually care about. CDC PLACES indicators for El Centro show the highest-prevalence measure is short sleep duration at 40.7%, followed by physical inactivity at 35.9%. In and around El Centro, CMS Hospital Compare tracks 1 hospital with an average rating of 1/5 and 1 carrying emergency department, the ER count is the more actionable figure if you are evaluating a move because it defines the effective trauma radius.

Areazine reconstructs these layers from U.S. Census ACS (place-level economics and demographics), CDC PLACES, and CMS Hospital Compare, each updated on its own cadence, and pairs them with live alerts from FEMA, NOAA, FDA, and CPSC scoped to the El Centro area. The comparison bars next to each metric anchor the number against a national reference, which is the fastest way to tell whether El Centro is an outlier on a given dimension before drilling into the raw value.