This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.
What do we mean by a neighborhood?
NeighborhoodScout® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. NeighborhoodScout contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
Masontown is a very small borough located in the state of Pennsylvania. With a population of 3,205 people and just one neighborhood, Masontown is the 462nd largest community in Pennsylvania. Much of the housing stock in Masontown was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic boroughs in the country.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Masontown is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 37.47% of the Masontown workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Masontown is a borough of service providers, construction workers and builders, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Masontown who work in healthcare (8.61%), healthcare suport services (8.52%), and office and administrative support (8.19%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Being a small borough, Masontown does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
The percentage of people in Masontown with college degrees is quite a bit lower than the national average for cities and towns of 21.84%: just 12.88% of people over 25 have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Masontown in 2022 was $26,275, which is low income relative to Pennsylvania, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $105,100 for a family of four. However, Masontown contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Masontown is a somewhat ethnically-diverse borough. The people who call Masontown home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Masontown residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Masontown include German, Italian, Irish, European, and English.
The most common language spoken in Masontown is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and German/Yiddish.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
When you see a neighborhood for the first time, the most important thing is often the way it looks, like its homes and its setting. Some places look the same, but they only reveal their true character after living in them for a while because they contain a unique mix of occupational or cultural groups. This neighborhood is very unique in some important ways, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive exploration and analysis.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Slovak and Czechoslovakian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 3.2% of this neighborhood's residents have Slovak ancestry and 1.0% have Czechoslovakian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 7.8% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Polish at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 96.8% of the neighborhoods in America.
The Neighbors
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 neighborhood in Masontown are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 76.4% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 32.2% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 83.3% 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 neighborhood, 37.5% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 24.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (21.0%), and 16.7% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.8% of households. Some people also speak Polish (7.8%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Boston's Beacon Hill blue-blood streets, Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish enclaves, Los Angeles' Persian neighborhoods. Each has its own culture derived primarily from the ancestries and culture of the residents who call these neighborhoods home. Likewise, each neighborhood in America has its own culture – some more unique than others – based on lifestyle, occupations, the types of households – and importantly – on the ethnicities and ancestries of the people who live in the neighborhood. Understanding where people came from, who their grandparents or great-grandparents were, can help you understand how a neighborhood is today.
In the neighborhood in Masontown, PA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (18.0%). There are also a number of people of Italian ancestry (11.4%), and residents who report Irish roots (10.0%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (8.4%), along with some Polish ancestry residents (5.7%), among others.
Getting to Work
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 neighborhood spend under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (34.9% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (81.7%) 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 (14.5%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
