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.
Bentonia is a tiny town located in the state of Mississippi. With a population of 307 people and just one neighborhood, Bentonia is the 246th largest community in Mississippi.
Bentonia real estate is some of the most expensive in Mississippi, although Bentonia house values don't compare to the most expensive real estate in the U.S.
Occupations and Workforce
Bentonia is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Bentonia is a town of service providers, managers, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Bentonia who work in office and administrative support (15.04%), maintenance occupations (15.04%), and management occupations (14.16%).
Setting & Lifestyle
The overall crime rate in Bentonia is one of the lowest in the US. This makes it one of the safer places to live in the country in terms of crime.
Residents will find that the town is relatively quiet. This is because it is not over-populated, and it has fewer college students, renters, and young children - all of whom can be noisy at times. So, if you're looking for a relatively peaceful place to live, Bentonia is worth considering.
One downside of living in Bentonia, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 36.57 minutes every day commuting to work.
As is often the case in a small town, Bentonia doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The percentage of adults in Bentonia who are college-educated is close to the national average for all communities of 21.84%: 17.02% of the adults in Bentonia have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Bentonia in 2022 was $21,405, which is middle income relative to Mississippi, and low income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $85,620 for a family of four.
Bentonia is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Bentonia home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Bentonia residents report their race to be Black or African-American, followed by White. Important ancestries of people in Bentonia include Irish, French, English, Scots-Irish, and German.
The most common language spoken in Bentonia is English. Other important languages spoken here include German/Yiddish and Spanish.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
When you see a neighborhood for the first time, the most important thing is often the way it looks, like its homes and its setting. Some places look the same, but they only reveal their true character after living in them for a while because they contain a unique mix of occupational or cultural groups. This neighborhood is very unique in some important ways, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive exploration and analysis.
People
Of particular note, 9.4% of the people in the neighborhood currently reside in a correction facility, held due to punishment for a crime.
Real Estate
This neighborhood has wide open spaces, few people, and lots of space to stretch out. If you like locations that fit that description, you may like this neighborhood. Based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, with only 28 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 93.2% of America.
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 Bentonia are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 85.1% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 11.8% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 53.5% 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, 36.8% 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 22.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (21.8%), and 19.1% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.6% of households.
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 neighborhood in Bentonia, MS, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (9.6%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (8.7%), and residents who report German roots (4.0%), and some of the residents are also of Scottish ancestry (1.6%), along with some Dutch ancestry residents (1.3%), 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 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (30.6% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (82.2%) 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 (13.0%) . 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.
