Brooklyn, NY (Williamsburg)

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 Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 93.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 15.6% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 62.7% 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 Williamsburg neighborhood, 31.1% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations, with 29.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (21.3%), and 18.6% 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 Williamsburg neighborhood is German/Yiddish, spoken by 42.1% of households. Other important languages spoken here include English and Spanish.

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 Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Hungarian (20.4%). There are also a number of people of Puerto Rican ancestry (8.8%), and residents who report Eastern European roots (7.3%), and some of the residents are also of Asian ancestry (6.7%), along with some French ancestry residents (2.7%), among others. In addition, 16.1% 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 Williamsburg neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (42.9% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.

Here most residents (52.6%) hop out the door and walk to work to get to work. In addition, quite a number also take the train to get to work (21.0%) and 15.1% of residents also drive alone in a private automobile for their daily commute. This is a special neighborhood for the number of people who walk to work. Combining exercise, low cost, and reduced pollution, plus the chance to see your neighbors, walking to work is fairly uncommon in America but likely to increase as people try to reduce their dependence on automobiles, and this neighborhood offers that opportunity today.