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.
Polo is a tiny city located in the state of Missouri. With a population of 509 people and just one neighborhood, Polo is the 414th largest community in Missouri. Polo has a large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic cities in the country.
Occupations and Workforce
Polo is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Polo is a city of sales and office workers, service providers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Polo who work in sales jobs (15.38%), management occupations (10.86%), and office and administrative support (9.95%).
Setting & Lifestyle
It is a fairly quiet city because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) Polo has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. Polo has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Polo than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Polo may be for you.
One downside of living in Polo, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 31.50 minutes every day commuting to work.
Polo is a small city, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
Demographics
The rate of college-level education in Polo is quite a bit lower than the national average among all cities of 21.84%: just 10.44% of people here over 25 have a bachelor's degree or an advanced degree.
The per capita income in Polo in 2022 was $42,662, which is wealthy relative to Missouri, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $170,648 for a family of four. However, Polo contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Polo home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Polo residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Polo include German, Irish, English, Scottish, and French.
The most common language spoken in Polo is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and Italian.
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 Polo, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
People
Of particular note, 3.7% of the people in the neighborhood currently reside in a correction facility, held due to punishment for a crime.
Real Estate
Uncrowded roads, rural America and space to be the individual you are. If you like these characteristics, this neighborhood may fit you. With just 19 residents per square mile, is less crowded than 94.9% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Croatian and Scottish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 1.4% of this neighborhood's residents have Croatian ancestry and 5.0% have Scottish ancestry.
The Neighbors
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 neighborhood in Polo are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 61.6% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 13.5% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 57.1% of U.S. neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the neighborhood, 35.3% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 28.5% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (18.1%), and 16.6% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.9% of households.
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 Polo, MO, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (19.7%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (13.4%), and residents who report Irish roots (8.9%), and some of the residents are also of Scottish ancestry (5.0%), along with some Norwegian ancestry residents (1.6%), among others.
Getting to Work
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (37.3% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (84.3%) 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 (6.4%) . 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.
