This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.
What do we mean by a neighborhood?
NeighborhoodScout® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. NeighborhoodScout contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
Phillipston is a very small town located in the state of Massachusetts. With a population of 1,724 people and just one neighborhood, Phillipston is the 304th largest community in Massachusetts.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some towns where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Phillipston is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Phillipston is a town of sales and office workers, professionals, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Phillipston who work in office and administrative support (13.25%), management occupations (11.77%), and sales jobs (11.08%).
Also of interest is that Phillipston has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 9.12% of people work from home. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce it is high relative to the nation. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.
Setting & Lifestyle
Because of many things, Phillipston is a great place for families with children to consider. First of all, many other families with children live here, making Phillipston a place where both parents and children are more likely to develop social ties with other families, as well as find family-oriented services and community. The town’s good public school district and large population of college-educated adults provide an environment conducive to academic values. With regard to real estate, Phillipston has a high rate of owner-occupied single family homes, which tends to reflect stability in the local community. Finally, Phillipston’s overall crime rate is lower than average for the country.
The town is relatively quiet, having a combination of lower population density and few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. For example, Phillipston has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Phillipston a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
One downside of living in Phillipston, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 31.47 minutes every day commuting to work.
As is often the case in a small town, Phillipston doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The citizens of Phillipston are slightly better educated than the national average of 21.84% for all cities and towns, with 24.82% of adults in Phillipston having a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Phillipston in 2022 was $40,133, which is low income relative to Massachusetts, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $160,532 for a family of four. However, Phillipston contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Phillipston home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Phillipston residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Phillipston include French, Irish, English, French Canadian, and Italian.
The most common language spoken in Phillipston is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and Portuguese.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
Many things matter about a neighborhood, but the first thing most people notice is the way a neighborhood looks and its particular character. For example, one might notice whether the buildings all date from a certain time period or whether shop signs are in multiple languages. This particular neighborhood in Phillipston, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
People
Of note is NeighborhoodScout's research finding that the neighborhood has some of the lowest rates of children living in poverty of any neighborhood in the United States. In a nation where approximately 1 in 4 children are living in poverty, the community truly stands out from the rest in this regard.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more French and Lithuanian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 24.8% of this neighborhood's residents have French ancestry and 3.6% have Lithuanian ancestry.
Migration / Stability
Do you like to be surrounded by people from all over the country or world, with different perspectives and life experiences? Or do you instead prefer to be in a neighborhood where most residents have lived there for a long time, creating a sense of cohesiveness? NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals that this neighborhood stands out among American neighborhoods for the uniqueness of the mobility of its residents. More residents of the neighborhood live here today that also were living in this same neighborhood five years ago than is found in 95.5% of U.S. neighborhoods. This neighborhood is really made up of people who know each other, don't move often, and have lived here in this very neighborhood for quite a while.
The Neighbors
How wealthy a neighborhood is, from very wealthy, to middle income, to low income is very formative with regard to the personality and character of a neighborhood. Equally important is the rate of people, particularly children, who live below the federal poverty line. In some wealthy gated communities, the areas immediately surrounding can have high rates of childhood poverty, which indicates other social issues. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals both aspects of income and poverty for this neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Phillipston are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 69.1% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 0.0% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 100.0% of America's neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the neighborhood, 34.3% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 26.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (23.6%), and 14.2% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.0% of households. Some people also speak Polish (3.4%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Boston's Beacon Hill blue-blood streets, Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish enclaves, Los Angeles' Persian neighborhoods. Each has its own culture derived primarily from the ancestries and culture of the residents who call these neighborhoods home. Likewise, each neighborhood in America has its own culture – some more unique than others – based on lifestyle, occupations, the types of households – and importantly – on the ethnicities and ancestries of the people who live in the neighborhood. Understanding where people came from, who their grandparents or great-grandparents were, can help you understand how a neighborhood is today.
In the neighborhood in Phillipston, MA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as French (24.8%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (19.6%), and residents who report English roots (13.1%), and some of the residents are also of French Canadian ancestry (8.7%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (7.5%), among others.
Getting to Work
How you get to work – car, bus, train or other means – and how much of your day it takes to do so is a large quality of life and financial issue. Especially with gasoline prices rising and expected to continue doing so, the length and means of one's commute can be a financial burden. Some neighborhoods are physically located so that many residents have to drive in their own car, others are set up so many walk to work, or can take a train, bus, or bike. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (33.2% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (79.9%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors to get to work (9.9%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
