Census Model Estimates More Than 800,000 Mississippi River Basin Households Lack Air Conditioning
Air conditioning is close to universal in the United States, but a new government model shows where it is not, and the map points up the middle of the country. Across the Mississippi River basin, an estimated more than 800,000 households have no access to air conditioning, according to the Census Bureau's experimental Local Air Conditioning Estimates. The gap is widest in the north: Wisconsin, not the Deep South, has the largest share of any state in the basin.
| Rank | State | Homes without air conditioning |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wisconsin | over 7% |
| 2 | Ohio | nearly 4% |
| 3 | Minnesota | nearly 4% |
| 4 | Arkansas | almost 3% |
| 5 | Tennessee | about 2% |
In Wisconsin, an estimated 188,000 households lack air conditioning, over 7 percent of the state. The concentration is sharpest around Milwaukee, where about one in ten homes has no AC. That is the counterintuitive part: a northern state with mild summers has more homes without cooling than warmer states where it is treated as a necessity, because for generations it was not one.
Why Milwaukee worries public health officials
During a recent hot spell, heat indexes in the Milwaukee area climbed past 100 degrees, and officials say the homes without air conditioning are disproportionately in neighborhoods already flagged as vulnerable, where poverty, poor housing quality, and a lack of transportation compound the risk. Ben Weston, Milwaukee County's chief health policy adviser, put it plainly. "Lack of air conditioning is not an isolated issue, it overlaps with so many other issues. Heat is a multiplier of existing vulnerabilities," he said. "That's the reason why individuals living in these communities feel heat so much differently."
The northern exposure is also a moving target. Christopher Uejio, a professor at Florida State University who produced his own national estimate of residential air conditioning last year, described how the calculus is changing. "When I lived in Wisconsin, we had one to two extreme heat events per summer. You could just open the windows, put up a box fan, and you'd be fine," he said. "As these heat events get longer and more protracted, more expensive adaptations have to be considered." A box fan is a fine answer to a two-day heat wave and a dangerous one to a two-week heat wave.
A number that understates the problem
The figures come from the Local Air Conditioning Estimates, which the Census Bureau built by combining the American Housing Survey and the American Community Survey from 2019 through 2023 with a machine-learning model, because the ACS does not directly ask whether a home has air conditioning. Uejio cautioned that the approach may overstate air conditioning in rural areas and understate it in cities, though he said having the data at all is a step forward.
The model also cannot see a unit that broke after the data was collected, or a household that has AC it cannot afford to run. Tennessee, at the bottom of the table with about 2 percent, is where those limits are most visible. We told the story of one Carroll County mother whose inherited system failed, leaving her and her daughter cooling off in the car, in our piece on Tennessee's air conditioning gap. Her home would likely still be counted as air conditioned.
Where people can turn
Help is local and uneven. States and counties across the basin run cooling centers during heat emergencies, and programs offering free fans, window units, or weatherization assistance exist in patches, often limited to older residents, families with young children, or people with medical conditions. The National Weather Service guidance during the recent heat was blunt, warning that in the worst conditions fans alone "may not be adequate." For the households in this data, that is precisely the problem.
You can look up the population and housing profile of Wisconsin, Ohio, or any state, or compare two places side by side, with the compare tool.
Sources
Reporting is from Wisconsin Watch (July 2026), with quotes from Ben Weston of Milwaukee County and Christopher Uejio of Florida State University. The dataset is the U.S. Census Bureau's experimental Local Air Conditioning Estimates, built on the American Housing Survey and the American Community Survey.
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How many Mississippi River basin households lack air conditioning?
A new Census Bureau model estimates more than 800,000, with the largest share in Wisconsin.
Which state has the most homes without air conditioning?
Among the basin states, Wisconsin has the highest share, with about 188,000 households, over 7%, lacking air conditioning, including roughly one in ten homes in the Milwaukee area.
Where does this air conditioning data come from?
The Census Bureau's experimental Local Air Conditioning Estimates, which combine the American Housing Survey and American Community Survey using a machine-learning model. It is an estimate, not a direct count.
