County Profiles

County Profiles, 2017:

Kansas

Missouri

Printing? This page prints best from Internet Explorer or this PDF version.

Many of the charts on this page are interactive.
Tips for use» Tips for using interactive charts

Click the "Chart Context Menu" icon in the top right corner of any chart to share, download or view the data.

Hover over bars or data points to show a tooltip with information about that item.

For charts with legends, click any name in the legend to hide its data; click again to show.

Lafayette County, Missouri

Quick Facts

2015 Population: 32,916
Median Household Income: $50,723
Poverty Rate: 11.5%
Unemployment Rate: 4.3%

Key Findings

Lafayette County saw a slight decline in population in 2015, with 32,916 residents compared to 33,069 in 2014. The only population growth over the last 15 years is among adults age 45-64 (up 20 percent) and age 65+ (up 13.6 percent).The county’s poverty rate is 11.5 percent, but another 18.4 percent of residents fall below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. The median household income is about 5 percent lower than the national average. These factors combined can put a strain on the county’s health care system, and that situation is made worse by a lack of access to care. Like many rural areas, Lafayette County has fairly high ratios of persons per doctor and dentist. Lafayette County has a much higher rate of deaths from heart disease than the Missouri average (249 per 100,000 population, compared to 198 for the state). On a positive note, only 10 percent of the county’s residents are without health insurance, down slightly from last year and well below the national average of 13 percent.

Information presented in this county profile is the most currently available as of September 2017.

County Data

Leading Causes of Death
Age-adjusted rate per 100,000 people, 2015. Source: MICA

	Lafayette Co.	Missouri
Heart disease	249.0	197.5
Cancer	155.6	173.0
Chronic lower resp. diseases	71.3	52.7
Other respiratory disease	41.3*	13.4
Stroke	35.8*	40.6
Septicemia	21.4*	11.6
Diabetes	20.6*	19.6
Alzheimer's disease	17.0*	28.6
Influenza & pneumonia	14.9*	17.8
Kidney disease	12.8*	19.9

* Sample size too small to ensure accuracy

Access to Care, 2016

	Ratio of Primary Care Physicians per person — 1: 3,270

	Ratio of Dentists per person — 1: 3,270

	Ratio of Mental Health Providers per person — 1: 990
	Source: County Health Rankings

Health Indicator Trends

Trends for selected health indicators by county from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's County Health Rankings website.