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.
Dawson is a very small town located in the state of Alabama. With a population of 1,568 people and just one neighborhood, Dawson is the 256th largest community in Alabama.
Occupations and Workforce
When you are in Dawson, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 36.22% of Dawson’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. Overall, Dawson is a town of sales and office workers, production and manufacturing workers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Dawson who work in sales jobs (20.38%), food service (8.21%), and business and financial occupations (7.77%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Overall, Dawson’s crime rate is one of the lowest in the nation, which makes a great place to live if safety is an important concern.
Residents will find that the town is relatively quiet. This is because it is not over-populated, and it has fewer college students, renters, and young children - all of whom can be noisy at times. So, if you're looking for a relatively peaceful place to live, Dawson is worth considering.
Being a small town, Dawson does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
Dawson ranks among the bottom of the nation in terms of college education compared to other cities and towns: only 4.03% of people over 25 have a college degree.
The per capita income in Dawson in 2022 was $29,548, which is middle income relative to Alabama, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $118,192 for a family of four. However, Dawson contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Dawson also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 31.67% of its population below the federal poverty line.
Dawson is a very ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Dawson home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Dawson residents report their race to be White. Dawson also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 13.41% of the town’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Dawson include Irish, German, Scottish, English, and French.
The most common language spoken in Dawson is English. Other important languages spoken here include French and Spanish.
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.
People
Of note, 74.3% of the children in this area live in poverty; an extraordinarily high percentage compared to other neighborhoods in the nation. In a nation where approximately one in four children grows up in poverty, this neighborhood stands out for the depth of the problem manifested here.
In addition, neighborhoodScout's exclusive research revealed that 96.0% of the adult residents in the neighborhood do not have a 4-year college degree, which is a lower rate of college graduated adults than found in 98.0% of the neighborhoods in America.
Also, the neighborhood stands out within Alabama for its college student friendly environment. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals that this neighborhood is home to a number of college students, is relatively walkable, and above average in safety. In combination, this makes it stand out for a good place for college students to consider. Because a number of college students live here, this neighborhood may be close to a college campus and offer certain amenities nearby geared towards the student body. While it's not an environment for everyone, ambitious scholars can enjoy seasonal excitement between semesters and school breaks, and parents can rest easy knowing that the area has an above average safety rating. For each of these reasons, the neighborhood is rated among the top 6.9% of college-friendly places to live in AL.
Modes of Transportation
Our research shows that more people carpool to work here in the (28.6%) than in 98.4% of the neighborhoods in America.
Car Ownership
We Americans love our cars. Not only are they a necessity for most Americans due to the shape of our neighborhoods and the distances between where we live, work, shop, and go to school, but we also fancy them. As a result, most households in America have one, two, or three cars. But NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis shows that the neighborhood has a highly unusual pattern of car ownership. Residents of this neighborhood must really love automobiles. NeighborhoodScout's Analysis reveals that 36.1% of the households here have four, five, or more cars. That is more cars per household than in 96.7% of the neighborhoods in the nation.
Real Estate
The real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 96.3% of all neighborhoods in America, with 33.5% of the occupied housing here being classified as mobile homes. So if you are looking for a mobile home, or you like the look and feel of mobile home parks, this neighborhood might have the setting you desire.
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 Dawson are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 65.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 74.3% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 99.0% 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, 36.2% 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 34.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (23.2%), and 5.7% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 93.4% of households. Some people also speak French (2.2%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Boston's Beacon Hill blue-blood streets, Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish enclaves, Los Angeles' Persian neighborhoods. Each has its own culture derived primarily from the ancestries and culture of the residents who call these neighborhoods home. Likewise, each neighborhood in America has its own culture – some more unique than others – based on lifestyle, occupations, the types of households – and importantly – on the ethnicities and ancestries of the people who live in the neighborhood. Understanding where people came from, who their grandparents or great-grandparents were, can help you understand how a neighborhood is today.
In the neighborhood in Dawson, AL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (13.4%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (12.9%), and residents who report German roots (8.6%), and some of the residents are also of Scottish ancestry (3.3%), along with some English ancestry residents (2.7%), among others.
Getting to Work
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (40.8% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (71.4%) 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 (28.6%) . 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.
