Lansing, MI (Valley Farms)

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 Valley Farms neighborhood in Lansing are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 69.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 27.1% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 79.3% 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 Valley Farms neighborhood, 47.6% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer 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 25.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (14.6%), and 12.8% in executive, management, and professional 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 Valley Farms neighborhood is English, spoken by 96.7% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Italian, Arabic and Polish.

Ethnicity / Ancestry

Boston's Beacon Hill blue-blood streets, Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish enclaves, Los Angeles' Persian neighborhoods. Each has its own culture derived primarily from the ancestries and culture of the residents who call these neighborhoods home. Likewise, each neighborhood in America has its own culture – some more unique than others – based on lifestyle, occupations, the types of households – and importantly – on the ethnicities and ancestries of the people who live in the neighborhood. Understanding where people came from, who their grandparents or great-grandparents were, can help you understand how a neighborhood is today.

In the Valley Farms neighborhood in Lansing, MI, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (25.7%). There are also a number of people of French Canadian ancestry (8.4%), and residents who report English roots (6.5%), and some of the residents are also of Swedish ancestry (5.3%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (4.9%), among others.

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 Valley Farms neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (55.2% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans. However, there is also a significant group of residents (21.0%) who commute over an hour in each direction.

Here most residents (59.3%) 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 (23.5%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.