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.
Palo Alto is a tiny borough located in the state of Pennsylvania. With a population of 971 people and just one neighborhood, Palo Alto is the 839th largest community in Pennsylvania. Palo Alto has a large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic boroughs in the country.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Palo Alto is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 36.40% of the Palo Alto workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Palo Alto is a borough of sales and office workers, service providers, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Palo Alto who work in sales jobs (11.40%), healthcare suport services (10.31%), and office and administrative support (10.09%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Palo Alto’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.
It is a fairly quiet borough 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!) Palo Alto 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. Palo Alto has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Palo Alto than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Palo Alto may be for you.
Palo Alto is a small borough, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
Demographics
In Palo Alto, just 9.39% of people over 25 hold a college degree, which is very low compared to the rest of the nation, whereas the average among all cities is 21.84%.
The per capita income in Palo Alto in 2022 was $27,908, which is low income relative to Pennsylvania, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $111,632 for a family of four. However, Palo Alto contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Palo Alto home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Palo Alto residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Palo Alto include German, Irish, Polish, Italian, and Dutch.
The most common language spoken in Palo Alto is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Polish.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
When you see a neighborhood for the first time, the most important thing is often the way it looks, like its homes and its setting. Some places look the same, but they only reveal their true character after living in them for a while because they contain a unique mix of occupational or cultural groups. This neighborhood is very unique in some important ways, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive exploration and analysis.
Real Estate
Many people dream of living along a street lined with row houses or other attached homes. Such places do often have an abundance of charm. If you are one of these people, the neighborhood could be your paradise. With 27.0% of the homes and real estate here classified as rowhouses or other attached homes, this neighborhood brims with opportunity to find the right place for you. Only 3.9% of U.S. neighborhoods have more row houses than this neighborhood, making it one of the most interesting things about this special neighborhood.
In addition, do you watch 'This Old House' on Public Television? Do you love the idea of fixing up a Colonial or Victorian era home, complete with the charm of yesteryear? Do you like to stroll or drive streets lined with gracious older residences? If you found yourself nodding yes to any of these questions, you are going to be interested in this unique neighborhood. The neighborhood stands out on a national scale for the sheer concentration of historic residences it contains: 59.7% of the residential real estate here was built from 1939 or earlier, some much earlier. This is a greater concentration of historic homes than 96.6% of the neighborhoods in the United States.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Lithuanian and Polish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 2.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Lithuanian ancestry and 14.1% have Polish ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 8.9% 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 97.6% of the neighborhoods in America.
The Neighbors
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 neighborhood in Palo Alto are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 72.1% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 15.1% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 61.3% 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, 36.7% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 23.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (22.6%), and 16.9% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.3% of households. Some people also speak Polish (8.9%).
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 Palo Alto, PA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (35.3%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (23.7%), and residents who report Polish roots (14.1%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (9.0%), along with some Dutch ancestry residents (5.0%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (43.1% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (76.2%) 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 (13.0%) . 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.
