Kalamazoo, MI (Oakwood)

There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.

The neighbors in the Oakwood neighborhood in Kalamazoo are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 73.4% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 12.8% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 55.6% of U.S. neighborhoods.

A neighborhood is far different if it is dominated by enlisted military personnel rather than people who earn their living by farming. It is also different if most of the neighbors are clerical support or managers. What is wonderful is the sheer diversity of neighborhoods, allowing you to find the type that fits your lifestyle and aspirations.

In the Oakwood neighborhood, 28.3% 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 27.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (26.4%), and 18.3% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.

Languages

The most common language spoken in the Oakwood neighborhood is English, spoken by 93.0% of households. Some people also speak Polish (6.4%).

Ethnicity / Ancestry

Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.

In the Oakwood neighborhood in Kalamazoo, MI, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (26.4%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (13.5%), and residents who report Irish roots (8.9%), and some of the residents are also of Dutch ancestry (8.8%), along with some Polish ancestry residents (5.1%), among others.

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 Oakwood neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (48.8% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.

Here most residents (82.4%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.