Queens, NY (Briarwood South)

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 Briarwood South neighborhood in Queens are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 72.8% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 25.1% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 77.0% 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 Briarwood South neighborhood, 37.2% of the working population is employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations, with 21.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (20.7%), and 20.3% in executive, management, and professional occupations.

Languages

The most common language spoken in the Briarwood South neighborhood is Spanish, spoken by 45.3% of households. Some people also speak English (18.3%).

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 Briarwood South neighborhood in Queens, NY, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Asian (36.3%). There are also a number of people of South American ancestry (13.4%), and residents who report Dominican roots (8.7%), and some of the residents are also of Mexican ancestry (5.5%), along with some Sub-Saharan African ancestry residents (2.2%), among others. In addition, 66.0% 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 Briarwood South neighborhood spend between 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (49.7% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.

Here most residents (36.0%) take the train to get to work. In addition, quite a number also drive alone in a private automobile to get to work (23.2%) and 19.5% of residents also ride the bus 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.