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.
South Chicago Heights is a very small village located in the state of Illinois. With a population of 3,871 people and just one neighborhood, South Chicago Heights is the 396th largest community in Illinois.
Occupations and Workforce
South Chicago Heights is a blue-collar town, with 41.75% of people working in blue-collar occupations, while the average in America is just 27.7%. Overall, South Chicago Heights is a village of sales and office workers, service providers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in South Chicago Heights who work in office and administrative support (17.69%), food service (11.32%), and sales jobs (9.26%).
Of important note, South Chicago Heights is also a village of artists. South Chicago Heights has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape South Chicago Heights’s character.
Setting & Lifestyle
For a small village, South Chicago Heights has a lot of people who use public transit to get to work, and those that do mostly ride taxis. This suggests that a real need for low-cost transportation in South Chicago Heights exists, and local transit is helping to meet that need.
Demographics
The rate of college-level education in South Chicago Heights is quite a bit lower than the national average among all cities of 21.84%: just 10.23% of people here over 25 have a bachelor's degree or an advanced degree.
The per capita income in South Chicago Heights in 2022 was $24,320, which is low income relative to Illinois and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $97,280 for a family of four. However, South Chicago Heights contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
South Chicago Heights is an extremely ethnically-diverse village. The people who call South Chicago Heights home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. People of Hispanic or Latino origin are the most prevalent group in South Chicago Heights, accounting for 37.78% of the village’s residents (people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race). The greatest number of South Chicago Heights residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in South Chicago Heights include Italian, Irish, German, Czech, and Polish.
South Chicago Heights also has a high percentage of its population that was born in another country: 16.13%.
The most common language spoken in South Chicago Heights is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Italian.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
Many things matter about a neighborhood, but the first thing most people notice is the way a neighborhood looks and its particular character. For example, one might notice whether the buildings all date from a certain time period or whether shop signs are in multiple languages. This particular neighborhood in South Chicago Heights, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Modes of Transportation
Our research shows that more people carpool to work here in the (28.5%) than in 98.5% of the neighborhoods in America.
Occupations
NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research identifies the neighborhood as having one of the highest concentrations of people employed in manufacturing or as laborers of any neighborhood in America. In fact, despite the loss of manufacturing jobs nationally, this neighborhood has 41.7% of its working residents employed in such fields, which is a higher proportion than 95.1% of American neighborhoods.
Diversity
Significantly, 6.9% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Italian at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 95.9% of the neighborhoods in America.
The Neighbors
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 neighborhood in South Chicago Heights are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 77.1% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 27.1% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 78.1% 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 neighborhood, 41.7% 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 27.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (20.0%), and 10.3% 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 neighborhood is English, spoken by 66.7% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish 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 neighborhood in South Chicago Heights, IL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (32.9%). There are also a number of people of Italian ancestry (12.6%), and residents who report German roots (5.7%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (5.7%), along with some Sub-Saharan African ancestry residents (2.5%), among others. In addition, 16.1% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
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 (35.9% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (64.1%) 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 (28.5%) . 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.
