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.
Thornton is a very small town located in the state of California. With a population of 1,004 people and just one neighborhood, Thornton is the 755th largest community in California.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Thornton is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 49.00% of the Thornton workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Thornton is a town of transportation and shipping workers, service providers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Thornton who work in farm management occupations (12.54%), healthcare suport services (10.26%), and management occupations (10.26%).
You will also find that a lot of people in Thornton work in agricultural jobs - much more than in the average community in America. This will be quite apparent if you drive around town, as much of the landscape is dedicated to farms.
Setting & Lifestyle
One downside of living in Thornton, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 34.60 minutes every day commuting to work.
Being a small town, Thornton does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
The population of Thornton has one of the lowest overall levels of education in the country: only 4.31% of people over 25 hold a college degree. The national average for all municipalities is 21.84%.
The per capita income in Thornton in 2022 was $18,655, which is low income relative to California and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $74,620 for a family of four. However, Thornton contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Thornton also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 36.66% of its population below the federal poverty line.
Thornton is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Thornton home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. People of Hispanic or Latino origin are the most prevalent group in Thornton, accounting for 58.88% of the town’s residents (people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race). The greatest number of Thornton residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Thornton include Irish, English, Italian, German, and Ukrainian.
Foreign born people are also an important part of Thornton's cultural character, accounting for 23.71% of the town’s population.
The most common language spoken in Thornton is Spanish. Other important languages spoken here include English and Portuguese.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
Occupations
It used to be that most Americans lived on the farm, or otherwise made their living from the land, the forests, or the sea. With global trade and an economy increasingly based on providing services to one another, fewer people farm, fish or harvest timber now than at any time in American history. But according to NeighborhoodScout's leading analysis, the neighborhood stands apart from most American neighborhood due to the proportion of its residents still working in these fields. With 23.7% of the workforce so employed, this neighborhood has a greater concentration of such workers than 99.8% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Car Ownership
American households most often have a car, and regularly they have two or three. But households in the neighborhood buck this trend. Residents of this neighborhood must really love automobiles. NeighborhoodScout's Analysis reveals that 34.7% of the households here have four, five, or more cars. That is more cars per household than in 96.0% of the neighborhoods in the nation.
Real Estate
The real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 96.0% of all neighborhoods in America, with 32.7% of the occupied housing here being classified as mobile homes. So if you are looking for a mobile home, or you like the look and feel of mobile home parks, this neighborhood might have the setting you desire.
In addition, unpopulated, and rural, the neighborhood is one of the least crowded neighborhoods in all of America. If you like open space, no traffic, and lots of room, this neighborhood may be just what you are looking for. According to NeighborhoodScout's leading research, this neighborhood is less densely populated than 94.1% of the neighborhoods in America.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Ukrainian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 1.6% of this neighborhood's residents have Ukrainian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 4.8% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Portuguese at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.2% of the neighborhoods in 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 Thornton are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 80.3% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 36.6% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 86.8% 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, 28.4% 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 23.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in farming, forestry, or commercial fishing (23.7%), and 12.7% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
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 neighborhood is English, spoken by 50.0% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Portuguese.
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is the shared learned behavior of peoples. Undeniably, different ethnicities and ancestries have different cultural traditions, and as a result, neighborhoods with concentrations of residents of one or another ethnicities or ancestries will express those cultures. It is what makes the North End in Boston so fun to visit for the Italian restaurants, bakeries, culture, and charm, and similarly, why people enjoy visiting Chinatown in San Francisco.
In the neighborhood in Thornton, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (50.0%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (11.2%), and residents who report English roots (10.5%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (9.3%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (5.0%), among others. In addition, 29.5% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
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 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (34.6% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (68.1%) 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 (12.3%) . 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.
