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.
Clarion is a very small city located in the state of Iowa. With a population of 2,749 people and just one neighborhood, Clarion is the 185th largest community in Iowa.
Occupations and Workforce
When you are in Clarion, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 46.48% of Clarion’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. Overall, Clarion is a city of professionals, production and manufacturing workers, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Clarion who work in farm management occupations (9.52%), office and administrative support (7.25%), and management occupations (7.04%).
Another important characteristic of Clarion is that a lot of people work in agricultural jobs, especially compared to most other communities in America, and there are quite a number of farms in town.
Setting & Lifestyle
The city is relatively quiet, having a combination of lower population density and few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. For example, Clarion has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Clarion a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
Compared to the rest of the country, citizens of Clarion spend much less time in their cars: on average, their commute to work is only 14.53 minutes. This also means that noise and pollution levels in the city are less than they would otherwise be.
Being a small city, Clarion does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
The education level of Clarion citizens, measured as those with bachelor's degrees or advanced degrees, is similar to the national average for all American cities and towns. 20.67% of adults 25 and older in Clarion have a college degree.
The per capita income in Clarion in 2022 was $35,505, which is upper middle income relative to Iowa and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $142,020 for a family of four. However, Clarion contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Clarion is a very ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Clarion home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Clarion residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Clarion also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 15.58% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Clarion include German, Norwegian, Irish, English, and Dutch.
The most common language spoken in Clarion is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish 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 Clarion, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
People
If you are planning to retire in Iowa, this neighborhood should be on your must-see list. For many reasons, may be considered a retiree's dream neighborhood. According to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis and metrics, it's peaceful and quiet, has above average safety from crime compared to other neighborhoods in Iowa, while also offering a diverse range of housing options. This, along with the vibrant mix of very educated seniors and other age groups who choose to live here, makes the neighborhood more retiree-friendly than 98.9% of neighborhoods in IA. If a Iowa retirement is in your future, this neighborhood should be one of the places you visit.
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 8.3% of the workforce so employed, this neighborhood has a greater concentration of such workers than 98.6% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Length of Commute
Whether walking, biking, riding, or driving, the length of one's commute is an important factor for one's quality of life. The neighborhood stands out for its commute length, according to NeighborhoodScout's analysis. Residents of the neighborhood have the pleasure of having one of the shortest commutes to work of any neighborhood in America. 64.4% of the residents have a commute time from home to work (one way) of less than fifteen minutes. This is a higher proportion of residents enjoying a short trip to work than NeighborhoodScout found in 97.4% of U.S. neighborhoods. Less time commuting means more time for other things in life.
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 35 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 91.9% of America.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Danish and Norwegian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 2.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Danish ancestry and 10.1% have Norwegian 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 Clarion are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 79.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 22.8% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 72.8% 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, 35.1% 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 34.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (13.8%), and 8.8% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 88.9% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (9.8%).
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 Clarion, IA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (36.5%). There are also a number of people of Mexican ancestry (12.1%), and residents who report Norwegian roots (10.1%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (8.7%), along with some English ancestry residents (6.2%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (64.4% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (88.0%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. 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.
