Oak Ridge, NC (Colfax)

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 Colfax neighborhood in Oak Ridge are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 81.5% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 6.3% 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 60.5% 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 Colfax neighborhood, 47.6% 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 26.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (13.6%), 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 Colfax neighborhood is English, spoken by 88.6% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Chinese and Korean.

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 Colfax neighborhood in Oak Ridge, NC, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (18.6%). There are also a number of people of Asian ancestry (10.8%), and residents who report Irish roots (8.6%), and some of the residents are also of Scottish ancestry (6.4%), along with some German ancestry residents (6.4%), among others. In addition, 11.5% 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 Colfax neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (59.0% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.

Here most residents (77.4%) 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.