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.
Watervliet is a very small city located in the state of Michigan. With a population of 1,643 people and just one neighborhood, Watervliet is the 390th largest community in Michigan.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some cities, Watervliet isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Watervliet are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Watervliet is a city of sales and office workers, professionals, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Watervliet who work in office and administrative support (12.61%), sales jobs (11.39%), and maintenance occupations (7.64%).
Also of interest is that Watervliet has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Setting & Lifestyle
Watervliet is a small city, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
Demographics
The population of Watervliet has a very low overall level of education: only 8.94% of people over 25 hold a 4-year college degree or higher.
The per capita income in Watervliet in 2022 was $22,182, which is low income relative to Michigan and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $88,728 for a family of four. However, Watervliet contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Watervliet is a very ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Watervliet home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Watervliet residents report their race to be White, followed by Native American. Watervliet also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 19.54% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Watervliet include German, Irish, English, Italian, and Dutch.
The most common language spoken in Watervliet is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Spanish.
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.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Dutch ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 6.5% of this neighborhood's residents have Dutch ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 7.7% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Italian at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 96.6% 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 Watervliet are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 73.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 31.8% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 82.9% 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 neighborhood, 35.8% 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 31.4% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (22.9%), and 10.0% in clerical, assistant, and tech support 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 neighborhood is English, spoken by 96.1% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Spanish.
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 Watervliet, MI, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (20.6%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (13.8%), and residents who report English roots (9.9%), and some of the residents are also of Mexican ancestry (8.5%), along with some Dutch ancestry residents (6.5%), 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 (38.9% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (69.9%) 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 (18.8%) . 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.
