City rankings

Youngest Cities in Mississippi

Starkville ranks #1 in Mississippi for youngest cities at 26.0 yrs.

This ranking orders all 41 qualifying Mississippi cities by median age, computed from the named federal field or time-series described below. It is one of 9 transparent ranking lenses Areazine publishes for Mississippi, each answering one direct question from official data. Compare Starkville's standing against every other Mississippi city ranked below.

Data updated 2026-08-21

41
Cities ranked
26.0 yrs
#1 Starkville
44.6 yrs
Lowest, Moss Point

What this Mississippi ranking shows

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates, the CDC PLACES population-level health analysis, and the CMS Hospital Compare quality data, Areazine ranks U.S. cities across more than 19,000 incorporated places, census-designated places, and consolidated city-county governments. State-level city rankings combine these federal datasets to produce intra-state comparisons across demographics, economics, health outcomes, and hospital quality.

Starkville leads 41 Mississippi cities at 26.0 yrs, while Moss Point sits at the bottom with 44.6 yrs - a total spread of 18.6 yrs on median age. The top 5 occupy 43% of that range, indicating a moderate distribution with meaningful steps between rungs.

The median Mississippi city in this list sits at 37.0 yrs, 11.0 yrs behind Starkville. See our methodology for ranking construction, data vintage, refresh cadence, and the federal upstream tables we join, and triangulate via the 8 other Mississippi rankings below, cities that lead on multiple lenses are the most robust signals.

Top 5 - Youngest Cities

Top 5 Mississippi cities ranked by median age
Rank City median age Population
#1 Starkville 26.0 yrs 25K
#2 Hattiesburg 29.4 yrs 47K
#3 Oxford 30.3 yrs 22K
#4 Horn Lake 33.5 yrs 27K
#5 Yazoo City 34.0 yrs 11K

Does median age track with city size?

Youngest Cities vs. population, top 25 ranked cities

Source: U.S. Census Bureau (population), median age per methodology 2×2 strategic matrix plotting 25 entities by Population (X) and median age (Y), with a crosshair dividing the plot into four quadrants. Large & highSmall & highLarge & lowSmall & low 050,000100,000150,000200,000 25303540 Population median age
Source: U.S. Census Bureau (population), median age per methodology

Youngest Cities 41

More Mississippi Rankings 8

Reading this Mississippi ranking responsibly

Single-metric rankings are useful precisely because they are honest about what they measure. A "highest income" ranking does not tell you that the top-ranked city is the best place to live in Mississippi; it tells you that, among cities of population ten thousand and above in Mississippi that have a published median household income field in the most recent American Community Survey five-year estimates, this city has the highest such value. That precise definition matters, because composite "best places" lists from real-estate marketing sites and lifestyle magazines often combine income with subjective weights on schools, walkability, and amenities, producing a score whose components are not disclosed and whose ordering is not reproducible. Areazine's editorial commitment is to keep the underlying field, source, and vintage visible so the reader can audit any rank in this list against the canonical federal record.

Cross-checking against other rankings is a useful sanity test. A city that appears in the top ten on three or more different rankings, for example, highest income, most educated, and lowest poverty, is showing a robust signal across multiple independent dimensions. A city that appears in the top ten on only one ranking and middling on the others is showing a narrower signal, often driven by a single statistical artifact (a small population pulling the per-capita measure, a recent acquisition spike inflating median home value, an outlier survey year). The other nine Mississippi rankings linked above provide that cross-check at zero extra effort.

Data Sources

Population and economic data from the Census Bureau American Community Survey (2024 5-year estimates). Health data from the CDC PLACES (2023). Ranking computations use U.S. Census Bureau reference geographies. Crime statistics, where referenced, originate from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program (also accessible via the Crime Data Explorer).