Charleston, IL (Eastern Illinois University)

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 Eastern Illinois University neighborhood in Charleston are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 98.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 41.9% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 90.2% 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 Eastern Illinois University neighborhood, 44.2% 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 executive, management, and professional occupations, with 26.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (17.4%), and 10.2% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.

Languages

The most common language spoken in the Eastern Illinois University neighborhood is English, spoken by 94.5% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (3.3%).

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 Eastern Illinois University neighborhood in Charleston, IL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (13.7%). There are also a number of people of Sub-Saharan African ancestry (5.7%), and residents who report Mexican roots (5.4%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (4.7%), along with some African ancestry residents (4.6%), among others.

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 Eastern Illinois University neighborhood spend under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (75.9% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.

Here most residents (45.2%) hop out the door and walk to work to get to work. In addition, quite a number also drive alone in a private automobile to get to work (32.8%) . This is a special neighborhood for the number of people who walk to work. Combining exercise, low cost, and reduced pollution, plus the chance to see your neighbors, walking to work is fairly uncommon in America but likely to increase as people try to reduce their dependence on automobiles, and this neighborhood offers that opportunity today.