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.
Allison is a tiny town located in the state of Pennsylvania. With a population of 503 people and just one neighborhood, Allison is the 979th largest community in Pennsylvania. Allison has a large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic towns in the country.
Occupations and Workforce
When you are in Allison, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 36.84% of Allison’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. Overall, Allison is a town of service providers, transportation and shipping workers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Allison who work in maintenance occupations (22.56%), food service (9.02%), and management occupations (8.27%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Allison’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.
It is a fairly quiet town because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) Allison has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. Allison has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Allison than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Allison may be for you.
One downside of living in Allison, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 35.70 minutes every day commuting to work.
As is often the case in a small town, Allison doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The education level of Allison citizens, measured as those with bachelor's degrees or advanced degrees, is similar to the national average for all American cities and towns. 20.58% of adults 25 and older in Allison have a college degree.
The per capita income in Allison in 2022 was $34,056, which is middle income relative to Pennsylvania and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $136,224 for a family of four. However, Allison contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Allison home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Allison residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Allison include Polish, Irish, Slovak, Greek, and English.
The most common language spoken in Allison is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Polish.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
Modes of Transportation
While most Americans do drive to work alone each day, the neighborhood stands out by having 93.5% of commuters doing so, which is a higher proportion of people driving alone to work than NeighborhoodScout found in 99.0% of all American neighborhoods.
People
If you're planning where to retire, the neighborhood in Allison is a great option to consider. According to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive retirement dream area analysis, it's peaceful and quiet, has above average safety ratings compared to other neighborhoods in PA, offers a wide range of housing options, and has already attracted an enviable mix of college educated seniors. This neighborhood ranks as better for retirement living than 88.9% of the neighborhoods in Pennsylvania. If you are considering retiring to Pennsylvania, this is a good neighborhood to look at.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Slovak and Croatian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 8.1% of this neighborhood's residents have Slovak ancestry and 2.1% have Croatian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 14.4% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Polish at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.3% 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 Allison are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 76.3% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 33.8% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 84.6% of U.S. neighborhoods.
A neighborhood is far different if it is dominated by enlisted military personnel rather than people who earn their living by farming. It is also different if most of the neighbors are clerical support or managers. What is wonderful is the sheer diversity of neighborhoods, allowing you to find the type that fits your lifestyle and aspirations.
In the neighborhood, 30.5% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 28.4% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (24.0%), and 17.0% in clerical, assistant, and tech support 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 97.7% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Polish, Italian and Spanish.
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is the shared learned behavior of peoples. Undeniably, different ethnicities and ancestries have different cultural traditions, and as a result, neighborhoods with concentrations of residents of one or another ethnicities or ancestries will express those cultures. It is what makes the North End in Boston so fun to visit for the Italian restaurants, bakeries, culture, and charm, and similarly, why people enjoy visiting Chinatown in San Francisco.
In the neighborhood in Allison, PA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (19.1%). There are also a number of people of Italian ancestry (18.7%), and residents who report German roots (14.2%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (10.9%), along with some Polish ancestry residents (8.2%), among others.
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 between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (48.0% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (93.5%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. 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.
