This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
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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.
Rockledge is a very small borough located in the state of Pennsylvania. With a population of 2,617 people and just one neighborhood, Rockledge is the 550th largest community in Pennsylvania.
Occupations and Workforce
Rockledge is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Rockledge is a borough of professionals, managers, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Rockledge who work in management occupations (17.87%), office and administrative support (12.61%), and teaching (9.68%).
Also of interest is that Rockledge has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 15.10% of the workforce. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce this is high compared to the rest of the county. 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
In Rockledge, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 32.02 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average. However, the borough is also quite pedestrian-friendly, because many neighborhoods are very dense and have amenities close enough together that people find it feasible to get around on foot.
Demographics
Rockledge is one of the most well-educated cities in the nation. 42.40% of adults in Rockledge have at least a bachelor's degree. Compare that to the average community in America, which has just 21.84% with a bachelor's degree or higher.
The per capita income in Rockledge in 2022 was $47,043, which is wealthy relative to Pennsylvania and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $188,172 for a family of four. However, Rockledge contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Rockledge home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Rockledge residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Rockledge include Irish, German, Italian, Polish, and English.
The most common language spoken in Rockledge is English. Other important languages spoken here include Slavic languages and Russian.
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 Rockledge, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Real Estate
Corner bodegas, stores on the first floor and apartments above, former grand Victorian residences converted into apartments, three-deckers built shoulder-to-shoulder, duplexes. Such building types define the real estate of neighborhoods dominated by small 2, 3, and 4 unit apartment buildings. Many are in older core neighborhoods of Eastern and Midwestern cities, or historic town centers in their hinterlands. If you wax romantic about the look and feel of such neighborhoods, with fresh pizza, falafel and an independent florist at the corner, then you might find the neighborhood worth a close look. This neighborhood is an absolutely outstanding example of the dominance of small 2, 3, and 4 unit apartment buildings compared to neighborhoods across the nation, as they make up a substantial portion of this neighborhood's real estate stock. In fact, no less than 31.2% of the real estate here is made up of such dwellings, which is higher than 95.1% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
People
With a nice mix of college students, safety from crime, and decent walkability, the neighborhood rates highly as a college student friendly place to live, and one that college students and their parents may want to consider. NeighborhoodScout's analysis shows that it rates more highly for a good place for college students to live than 86.4% of the neighborhoods in PA. This often also means that the area has certain amenities and services geared towards college students, from undergraduates to graduate students.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Irish and Romanian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 45.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Irish ancestry and 4.1% have Romanian 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 Rockledge are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 58.4% of the neighborhoods in America. With 13.4% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 57.8% 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, 47.0% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 20.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (18.3%), and 14.5% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 97.7% 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 Rockledge, PA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (45.8%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (27.1%), and residents who report Italian roots (17.1%), and some of the residents are also of Polish ancestry (5.7%), along with some English ancestry residents (4.9%), 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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (27.4% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (71.4%) 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 (6.2%) . 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.
