Reading, PA (City Center)

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 City Center neighborhood in Reading are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 99.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 47.4% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 93.2% 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 Reading City Center neighborhood, 33.1% 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 25.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (22.0%), and 12.9% in executive, management, and professional 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 Reading City Center neighborhood is Spanish, spoken by 51.2% of households. Other important languages spoken here include English and Italian.

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 City Center neighborhood in Reading, PA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Puerto Rican (37.8%). There are also a number of people of Dominican ancestry (13.4%), and residents who report Mexican roots (7.8%), and some of the residents are also of Polish ancestry (4.4%), along with some German ancestry residents (3.6%), among others. In addition, 15.8% 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 Reading City Center neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (36.2% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.

Here most residents (51.7%) 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 (21.9%) and 9.8% of residents also ride the bus 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.