Philadelphia, PA (Overbrook Southwest)

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 Overbrook Southwest neighborhood in Philadelphia are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 62.3% of the neighborhoods in America. With 23.1% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 74.4% 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 Overbrook Southwest neighborhood, 42.5% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional 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 27.6% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (15.9%), and 14.1% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.

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 Overbrook Southwest neighborhood is English, spoken by 89.0% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Italian.

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 Overbrook Southwest neighborhood in Philadelphia, PA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Jamaican (11.9%). There are also a number of people of Puerto Rican ancestry (9.4%), and residents who report Haitian roots (6.2%), and some of the residents are also of Sub-Saharan African ancestry (4.3%), along with some Mexican ancestry residents (3.6%), among others.

Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in Overbrook Southwest neighborhood spend between 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (33.8% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.

Here most residents (61.7%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also ride the bus to get to work (15.2%) and 6.3% of residents also take the train 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.