Central Ohio homeowners by age, living alone and disability, by ZIP code

This knowledge base already says when Central Ohio's houses were built, ZIP code by ZIP code. This page says who lives in them: the age of the people who own them, how many older adults live alone, and how many older residents report difficulty walking, bathing or running errands, for the seven Central Ohio counties and the same 36 ZIP codes, from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, with every margin of error printed and every figure too thin to trust left out.

Last updated September 2026 · Figures are the Census Bureau's American Community Survey 2020 to 2024 5-year estimates, read September 24, 2026 · No prices on this page; the Estimate Builder carries those · Part of the knowledge base

What these figures count

Every figure on this page is the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, 2020 to 2024 five-year estimates, the same release as the page on when Central Ohio houses were built, by ZIP code, for the same 36 ZIP codes. The survey reports a margin of error for every estimate at 90 percent confidence, and this page prints it. Where a share rests on so few responses that its margin is more than 30 percent of the estimate, or the count under it is that uncertain, the table says too few responses instead of printing a number that cannot be told apart from its neighbors. The ZIP codes are the Census Bureau's ZIP code tabulation areas, which approximate postal ZIP codes; no town name is attached to them here, because a ZIP code and a town rarely share a boundary.

Three definitions matter. A home is owner-occupied when the owner or a co-owner lives in it, with or without a mortgage. The householder is usually the person, or one of the people, in whose name the home is owned, being bought or rented. And the disability questions ask about people, not homes: whether a person has serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs, difficulty dressing or bathing, or difficulty doing errands alone such as visiting a doctor's office or shopping. The Census Bureau's published tables do not cross those answers with whether the person owns the home, so no figure here says how many older homeowners have a difficulty; the disability figures describe everyone 65 and older living in a household or in noninstitutional group housing such as a college dormitory, and leave out people in nursing homes, prisons and other institutions.

Who owns the homes, by age, county by county

Franklin County's homeowners are younger than the state's. In 27.8 percent of its owner-occupied homes the householder is 65 or older, against 33.4 percent for Ohio and 33.0 percent for the nation, a difference that passes the Census Bureau's test for statistical significance. Among the seven counties the share runs from 21.9 percent in Union County to 31.5 percent in Licking County. Older owners also live in older houses: in Franklin County 61.5 percent of owner households headed by someone 65 or older are in housing built before 1980, against 50.3 percent of owners aged 35 to 64.

Many older owners have been in the same house a long time. In Franklin County 34.4 percent of owners 65 and older moved into their home in 1989 or earlier, and 54.2 percent before 2000; in Delaware County, where more of the housing is new, 18.8 percent moved in before 1990.

Older adults living alone

The same count gives three different percentages depending on what it is divided by, so the table names each one. In Franklin County 54,970 people 65 and older live alone, plus or minus 1,786. That is 32.5 percent of the county's adults 65 and older who live in households, and 32,652 of them live alone in a home they own, which is 40.2 percent of the county's owner households headed by someone 65 or older.

Difficulty walking, bathing and running errands

About one in five people 65 and older in Franklin County, 20.4 percent, report serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs, the same as Ohio's 20.5 percent; among people 75 and older it is 30.3 percent. Delaware County is lowest of the seven at 13.6 percent, a difference from Franklin County and Ohio that passes the Bureau's significance test, and Pickaway and Fairfield have the highest figures at 23.7 and 23.5, though neither can be told apart from Madison's 21.9. Difficulty dressing or bathing is less common, 7.4 percent of Franklin County's residents 65 and older, and at the county level the smaller counties' figures for it rest on few enough responses that two are not printed. These percentages are the Census Bureau's own published figures from its disability table.

The 36 ZIP codes

At the ZIP code level the samples are smaller and the margins wider, so the table below carries only the measures that hold up in most ZIP codes. The share of owner homes with a householder 65 or older runs from 11.7 percent in 43035 to 35.6 percent in 43113, and 43220, 43055, 43130 and 43214 are close behind at 34.4 to 35.5 percent, and 43023 and 43209 at 33.9 and 33.3, with margins that overlap one another, so no order among them can be read from these figures. Difficulty walking or climbing stairs among people 65 and older ranges from 9.0 percent in 43017 to 29.1 percent in 43113 and 28.4 percent in 43228, among the ZIP codes whose figures pass the reliability test. Difficulty dressing or bathing is not shown by ZIP code: it fails the test in 29 of the 36.

What these figures mean for a bathroom is set out elsewhere in this knowledge base: how a shower is made easier to use on the page on accessible and aging-in-place bathrooms, how grab bars and seats are anchored on the page on grab bars and shower seats, and how often older adults are hurt in bathrooms on the page on bathroom injuries and older-adult falls. The houses themselves, by county, are on the pages on Delaware, Licking and Fairfield houses by the numbers and Union, Madison and Pickaway houses by the numbers.

Sources

Every figure, date and quotation on this page comes from one of these documents, read on the date given. Where two of them disagree, the page says so.

• U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020 to 2024 5-year estimates, detailed tables B25007 Tenure by Age of Householder, B25003, B25011, B11007, B09021, B25126, B25128, B18101, B18105, B18106 and B18107, through data.census.gov, for seven counties, Ohio, the United States and 36 ZIP code tabulation areas; read September 24, 2026.
• U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020 to 2024 5-year estimates, subject tables S1810 Disability Characteristics and S0103 Population 65 Years and Over; read September 24, 2026.
• U.S. Census Bureau, 2024 American Community Survey Subject Definitions, tenure, householder and disability status; read September 24, 2026.
• U.S. Census Bureau, Understanding and Using American Community Survey Data, General Handbook, 2020, chapters 7 and 8, the margin and significance formulas used here; read September 24, 2026.
• Census Reporter, American Community Survey 2024 5-year data, used as a second reading of the detailed tables, every value matched to the Census Bureau's own; it does not carry the subject tables S1810 and S0103; read September 24, 2026.

Common questions