Queens, NY (Jamaica)

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 Jamaica neighborhood in Queens are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 71.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, 5.4% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 63.3% of America'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 Jamaica neighborhood, 36.2% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations, with 24.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (20.0%), and 19.6% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.

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 Jamaica neighborhood is English, spoken by 65.2% of households. Other important languages spoken here include French and Spanish.

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 Jamaica neighborhood in Queens, NY, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Asian (16.5%). There are also a number of people of Jamaican ancestry (14.6%), and residents who report Puerto Rican roots (12.6%), and some of the residents are also of Haitian ancestry (7.1%), along with some South American ancestry residents (4.6%), among others. In addition, 39.3% 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 Jamaica neighborhood spend between 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (35.8% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.

Here most residents (41.0%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also take the train to get to work (30.4%) and 14.3% 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.