Mountain Home, Arkansas

Area Profile

13,108 residents. Public schools, jobs, income, housing cost, climate and natural-hazard risk for Mountain Home, in Baxter County.

57out of 100
Area Score
Bottom 37% of 2,944 published profiles

How we calculate this

How this area ranks
OpportunityTop 50% of 3,904 published cities56
GrowthTop 22% of 2,973 published cities66
Housing affordability2728th of 4,223 published cities71
ClimateTop 32% of 4,223 published cities74
Physical resilience2909th of 4,182 published cities38
Access4127th of 4,226 published cities43
Economic stability3856th of 4,226 published cities32
The quick read

Unemployment is 4.6% and median household income $41,274, putting employment conditions in the middle range of published city profiles.

55 housing units were authorized over the past twelve months, within 11% of the prior year — steady rather than turning.

Rent takes 25% of median household income here, below the 30% threshold conventionally called cost-burdened, and the median home is 4.1 times that income.

At a glance

Population
13,108
2024 ACS 5-Year
Median household income
$41,274
Bottom 12% nationally
Density
1,091/sq mi
12.0 sq mi of land
Median age
47.1
2024 ACS 5-Year
County
Baxter County
Arkansas
Metro area
Mountain Home, AR
Nearest major airport
SGF
84 mi · Springfield-Branson Ntl
Median home value
$169,800
2024 ACS 5-Year

Jobs & opportunity

Unemployment of 4.6% is lower than 39% of the 3,904 measured US cities.

Employment grew 3.1% over the past year, to 17,109 employed residents.

Median household income of $41,274 is below 88% of measured US cities.

MetricValueCompared with peersSource period
Median household income ±$4,768$41,274Bottom 12%2024 ACS 5-Year
Per capita income ±$5,298$35,579Top 44%2024 ACS 5-Year
Poverty rate18.8%Top 26%2024 ACS 5-Year
Average commute14.8 minBottom 5%2024 ACS 5-Year
Bachelor's degree or higher23.1%Top 44%2024 ACS 5-Year
Employment17,109Bottom 19%June 2026
Employment change (3 years)4.7%Top 7%June 2026
Employment change (year over year)3.1%Top 2%June 2026
Labor force17,925Bottom 19%June 2026
Labor force participation46.1%Bottom 16%2024 ACS 5-Year
Unemployment change (year over year)0.0%Bottom 45%June 2026
Unemployment rate4.6%Top 39%June 2026
Median household income, successive ACS releases
202120222023202442k41k
Each point is a separate five-year estimate, most recently $41,274 in the 2024 ACS 5-Year. Consecutive releases share four years of sample, so AreaProfile shows them as a record of successive estimates and does not compute a year-over-year change from them.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes city-level labor data only for places of 25,000 or more. This is the figure for Baxter County, AR, which contains this city.

There are 14.3 students for every full-time teacher, fewer than in most measured places.

Public schools
7
2024-25 school year
Students per teacher
14.3
across all schools here
Math proficiency
Reading proficiency
SchoolDistrictStudentsPer teacherMathReading
MOUNTAIN HOME CAREER ACADEMIES · charterMOUNTAIN HOME SCHOOL DISTRICT1,52312.0
HACKLER INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLMOUNTAIN HOME SCHOOL DISTRICT83718.6
NELSON WILKS HERRON ELEMENTARYMOUNTAIN HOME SCHOOL DISTRICT55917.5
PINKSTON MIDDLE SCHOOLMOUNTAIN HOME SCHOOL DISTRICT54614.4
MOUNTAIN HOME KINDERGARTENMOUNTAIN HOME SCHOOL DISTRICT30016.7
GUY BERRY COLLEGE AND CAREER ACADEMY · charterMOUNTAIN HOME SCHOOL DISTRICT528.7
ARKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY-MOUNTAIN HOME CAREER CENTERASU - MOUNTAIN HOME CAREER CENTER0

41.9% of students here are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. That describes the circumstances families arrive with rather than how the schools perform, which is why AreaProfile shows it and does not score it.

Public schools only, from the NCES Common Core of Data. Schools are placed by ZIP code, so this is which schools are in this place rather than which one a particular address is zoned for — district boundaries do not follow municipal ones, and enrollment zones change. Fully virtual schools are excluded: they enroll students from across the state while reporting one administrative address, and counting them here would describe a school population this place does not have. The assessment covers grades 3 through 8, so a high school shows no proficiency figure — a dash in those columns means the test was not given at that school, not that it performed badly. Proficiency is measured against Arkansas’s own standard, so it compares cleanly within the state and only broadly against other states; AreaProfile therefore ranks it within state. The directory is current, while the proficiency figures are from the last school year with national coverage before the pandemic interrupted testing.

Housing & affordability

How it’s calculated →

Median rent of $865 takes 25% of median household income, below the 30% threshold at which a household is considered cost-burdened.

A median home costs 4.1 times median household income here, above the historic benchmark of about three times income.

Rent as a share of income
25.1%
Below the 30% cost-burdened threshold
Home price to income
4.1×
median home value ÷ median income
Median gross rent
$865
2024 ACS 5-Year
Median home value
$169,800
2024 ACS 5-Year
MetricValueCompared with peersSource period
Home price to income4.11Top 25%2024 ACS 5-Year
Homeownership rate60.9%Bottom 22%2024 ACS 5-Year
Housing units ±2816,797Top 9%2024 ACS 5-Year
Median gross rent ±$45$865Bottom 37%2024 ACS 5-Year
Median home value ±$9,133$169,800Bottom 45%2024 ACS 5-Year
Rent as a share of income25.1%Top 17%2024 ACS 5-Year
Vacancy rate6.7%Bottom 37%2024 ACS 5-Year

Both affordability measures come from the same ACS release as the income they are compared with, so the comparison is like for like. They describe housing cost against local earnings and are not a cost-of-living index — transport, groceries, healthcare, insurance and taxes are not included, and a place can look affordable here and still be expensive to live in for reasons this does not capture.

Growth & development

How it’s calculated →
Development Momentum
66/ 100
Top 22% of 2,973 published city profiles
Permitting is increasing, measured from 2020 to 2025.

An AreaProfile calculation combining permit volume per resident, its direction over one and three years, population change and employment growth. Permit volume alone is not the measure.

Population has grown 4% since 2020, reaching 13,348 in 2024.

Permitting has turned upward after moving the other way the year before.

Population is still rising, but more slowly than in the preceding year.

New construction is predominantly single-family: only 0% of permitted units are in buildings of five or more homes.

At 4.2 permitted units per 1,000 residents, building activity is above the median for measured US cities.

Units permitted
55
12 months ending July 2026
Per 1,000 residents
4.2
Top 34% nationally
Year over year
−11%
vs the prior twelve months
Multifamily share
0.0%
units in 5+ unit buildings
Population, annual estimates
2020202120222023202413k13k
Census Population Estimates Program, July 1 of each year. These annual estimates are designed for year-over-year comparison, unlike the ACS five-year figure shown as this profile's population.
Housing units permitted per year
202020222023202420255624
Annual totals from the Census Building Permits Survey. Permitting in 2025 was close to 2020 (−4%).

Weather & climate

7 of the twelve months have a normal average temperature between 55°F and 80°F. July averages a high of 90°F and January a low of 28°F.

Normal annual precipitation is 41.2 inches.

20°40°60°80°100°JFMAMJJASOND
Solid line: normal daily high. Dashed line: normal daily low. 1991-2020 normals from NOAA station MOUNTAIN HOME BAXTER AP, 5.3 miles from this location.
Precipitation
JFMAMJJASOND4.7"
Normal monthly precipitation, in inches.
MetricValueSource period
Annual precipitation41.2"1991-2020 Normals
Average January low28°F1991-2020 Normals
Average July high90°F1991-2020 Normals
Comfortable months71991-2020 Normals
Seasonal temperature swing42°F1991-2020 Normals

Climate figures are thirty-year normals, not current conditions. They describe what a typical year looks like rather than what the weather is doing today.

Physical risk

38 / 100
Physical resilience

The hazards accounting for most of this area's expected annual loss are inland flooding, tornado and ice storm.

Ice stormHigh
TornadoModerate
EarthquakeElevated
LandslideModerate
Winter weatherModerate
Cold waveModerate
Inland floodingModerate

Low or minimal exposure: strong wind, lightning, heat wave, wildfire, hurricane, hail.

Hazard ratings are AreaProfile calculations derived from the FEMA National Risk Index v1.20.0 (December 2025). FEMA publishes at county level. City values are the population-weighted mean of the counties the city overlaps, using AreaProfile place-to-county land-area weights. FEMA does not endorse this presentation. Higher physical resilience means lower exposure.

These are deaths, not offences. AreaProfile does not publish reported crime, and this is not a substitute for it — it says nothing about burglary, theft or assault.

Baxter County records 4.3 homicide deaths per 100,000 residents a year, near the middle of counties measured. The CDC does not publish this below county level.

Firearm deaths of all intents run at 23.3 per 100,000 — more than the homicide rate, because nationally most firearm deaths are suicides.

Drug overdose deaths run at 11.7 per 100,000 residents in Baxter County.

Homicide
4.3
per 100,000 residents · under 10 deaths
Firearm deaths, all intents
23.3
per 100,000 residents · under 10 deaths
Drug overdose
11.7
per 100,000 residents · under 10 deaths
Suicide
20.2
per 100,000 residents · under 10 deaths

Firearm deaths count every intent together, and nationally the majority are suicides rather than homicides. The two columns overlap and should not be added.

Age-adjusted rates from provisional death certificate records, published by the CDC for Baxter County as a whole — these rates are not published below county level. A county can hold both a dense city centre and a suburb whose experience of it is nothing alike, so this describes the county around Mountain Home rather than Mountain Home itself. That is why AreaProfile shows these figures and does not put them in the Area Score. Where fewer than ten deaths were recorded the count is suppressed at source, and a rate built on single figures moves sharply between releases. What this measure has that reported crime does not: a death certificate is filed whether or not the local police agency submitted a return that year, so the figures stay comparable between places and over time.

What this profile does not cover

Three things people look for are missing from every AreaProfile page, and each is missing for a reason rather than by oversight. The Area Score is calculated without them and the weighting is documented on the methodology page.

Reported crime
The FBI’s Crime Data Explorer is the only source for reported offences with national coverage and a published method, and it requires an API key AreaProfile does not hold. Arrest counts, news volume and commercial “safety scores” are not substituted in the meantime. What is published above under Safety is a different measurement — deaths rather than offences, from death certificates rather than police returns — and it covers no property crime at all.
Taxes
No tax dataset has met the source admission test for coverage, transparent methodology and update cadence. Nothing here is individualized tax advice.
Full cost of living
No public source publishes one with national coverage and a documented method. Housing affordability above is computed from published rent, price and income, and excludes transport, groceries, healthcare, insurance and taxes — commuting cost in particular tends to offset suburban housing savings.

Access

1 major airport lies within 100 miles, the nearest 84 miles away.

AirportCodeDistanceLongest runway
Springfield-Branson NtlSGF84 mi8,000 ft
Northwest Arkansas NtlXNA107 mi8,801 ft
Bill and Hillary Clinton Ntl/Adams FldLIT111 mi8,273 ft

Airport identity, position and runway data come from the FAA. “Major airport” is an AreaProfile classification — a public-use civil airport with a paved runway of at least 8,000 feet — not an FAA hub designation. Distances are straight-line, not driving distance.

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Area Score
57
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Data & methodology

Used forSourceSource periodUpdated
AccessFederal Aviation Administration
Airports (NASR) — Aeronautical Data Delivery Service
NASR current cycle28-day NASR cycle
Physical riskFederal Emergency Management Agency
National Risk Index
National Risk Index December 2025 (v1.20.0)Periodic dataset versions (v1.20.0 current)
ClimateNOAA National Centers for Environmental Information
U.S. Climate Normals 1991–2020 (Monthly)
1991-2020 NormalsEvery ten years (next release follows the 2001–2030 period)
JobsU.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Local Area Unemployment Statistics
June 2026Monthly
DemographicsU.S. Census Bureau
Population Estimates Program
July 1, 2024 estimateAnnual (vintage released each spring)
DevelopmentU.S. Census Bureau
Building Permits Survey
12 months ending July 2026Monthly, roughly three weeks after the reference month
Demographics, Housing, Income, JobsU.S. Census Bureau
American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (Table-Based Summary File)
2024 ACS 5-YearAnnual (5-year estimates released each December)
safetyU.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics
Provisional county-level mortality by intent
April, 2025 to March, 2026Quarterly, with a rolling twelve-month window alongside complete calendar years
schoolsU.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics
Common Core of Data and EDFacts assessments
2024-25 school yearDirectory annually; assessment results as EDFacts releases them

Profile recalculated August 30, 2026. Recalculation is not the same as new source data — each figure above shows the period its source actually covers. Read the full methodology or browse every source.

ZIP codes in Mountain Home

1 published ZIP profiles
ZIPPopulationMedian household incomeArea Score
7265329,564$48,71859