The quick read

Reading Fort Madison, IA beyond the headline numbers

Fort Madison sits inside Lee County, Iowa, at roughly 40.63°N, -91.32°W. Its population of 32,893 and median household income of $62,382 are the two most quoted figures, but in isolation they hide the shape of the city. A median home value of $141,400 paired with median rent of $835 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 13.1% 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 Fort Madison show the highest-prevalence measure is high blood pressure at 37.7%, followed by obesity at 37.6%.

Areazine reconstructs these layers from U.S. Census ACS (Place geography), 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 Fort Madison area. The comparison bars next to each metric anchor the number against a national reference, which is the fastest way to tell whether Fort Madison is an outlier on a given dimension before drilling into the raw value.