Plainfield, NJ (Van Wyck Brooks Historic District)

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 Van Wyck Brooks Historic District neighborhood in Plainfield are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 66.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 27.4% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 78.4% 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 Van Wyck Brooks Historic District neighborhood, 31.4% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 30.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (26.6%), and 12.0% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.

Languages

The most common language spoken in the Van Wyck Brooks Historic District neighborhood is English, spoken by 67.8% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (27.5%).

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 Van Wyck Brooks Historic District neighborhood in Plainfield, NJ, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as South American (9.9%). There are also a number of people of Jamaican ancestry (7.3%), and residents who report Sub-Saharan African roots (5.1%), and some of the residents are also of African ancestry (5.1%), along with some Puerto Rican ancestry residents (4.4%), among others. In addition, 28.2% 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 Van Wyck Brooks Historic District neighborhood spend between 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (30.3% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.

Here most residents (64.7%) 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 (13.6%) and 6.5% of residents also ride the bus 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.