Lake Forest, IL (Washington Circle / Lake Forest College)

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 Washington Circle / Lake Forest College neighborhood in Lake Forest are wealthy, making it among the 15% highest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 99.3% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 8.8% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 52.3% of America'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 Washington Circle / Lake Forest College neighborhood, 66.5% 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 government jobs, whether they are in local, state, or federal positions (11.1%), and 9.6% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.

Languages

The most common language spoken in the Washington Circle / Lake Forest College neighborhood is English, spoken by 83.0% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (6.4%).

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 Washington Circle / Lake Forest College neighborhood in Lake Forest, IL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (18.0%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (13.4%), and residents who report English roots (9.3%), and some of the residents are also of Mexican ancestry (7.3%), along with some Asian ancestry residents (7.0%), among others. In addition, 14.7% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.

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 Washington Circle / Lake Forest College neighborhood spend between 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (35.7% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.

Here most residents (35.4%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also take the train to get to work (22.9%) and 15.3% of residents also hop out the door and walk to work for their daily commute. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.