Oakland, CA (Civic Center / Downtown)

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 Civic Center / Downtown neighborhood in Oakland are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 74.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 31.3% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 83.3% of U.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 Civic Center / Downtown neighborhood, 63.2% 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 16.4% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (14.5%), and 6.0% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.

Languages

The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the Civic Center / Downtown neighborhood is Chinese, spoken by 49.5% of households. Other important languages spoken here include English, Spanish, African languages and French.

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 Civic Center / Downtown neighborhood in Oakland, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Asian (64.3%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (4.6%), and residents who report Polish roots (3.9%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (3.5%), along with some Mexican ancestry residents (3.1%), among others. In addition, 60.9% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.

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 Civic Center / Downtown neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (43.3% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.

Here most residents (21.7%) take the train to get to work. In addition, quite a number also drive alone in a private automobile to get to work (20.0%) and 8.3% of residents also hop out the door and walk to work for their daily commute. This neighborhood is distinguished by the high number of residents who take the train to work each day, which can be a very good way to get to work at a lower cost and with less pollution.