New York, NY (Harlem)

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 Harlem neighborhood in New York are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 99.6% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 32.9% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 84.7% 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 Harlem neighborhood, 30.0% 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 27.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (23.9%), and 18.3% 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 Harlem neighborhood is English, spoken by 65.1% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, French and African languages.

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 Harlem neighborhood in New York, NY, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Dominican (15.9%). There are also a number of people of Puerto Rican ancestry (13.4%), and residents who report Sub-Saharan African roots (11.4%), and some of the residents are also of African ancestry (9.8%), along with some Haitian ancestry residents (3.5%), among others. In addition, 22.7% 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 Harlem neighborhood spend between 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (46.0% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.

Here most residents (56.0%) take the train to get to work. In addition, quite a number also ride the bus to get to work (10.1%) and 7.0% of residents also drive alone in a private automobile for their daily commute. This neighborhood is distinguished by the high number of residents who take the train to work each day, which can be a very good way to get to work at a lower cost and with less pollution.