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.
Rockdale is a very small village located in the state of Illinois. With a population of 1,976 people and just one neighborhood, Rockdale is the 577th largest community in Illinois.
Occupations and Workforce
Rockdale is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Rockdale is a village of sales and office workers, service providers, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Rockdale who work in food service (14.59%), sales jobs (13.40%), and office and administrative support (11.97%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Rockdale’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.
Being a small village, Rockdale does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
The percentage of people in Rockdale with college degrees is quite a bit lower than the national average for cities and towns of 21.84%: just 11.68% of people over 25 have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Rockdale in 2022 was $24,377, which is low income relative to Illinois and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $97,508 for a family of four. However, Rockdale contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Rockdale is an extremely ethnically-diverse village. The people who call Rockdale home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Rockdale residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Rockdale also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 44.07% of the village’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Rockdale include Irish, Polish, German, Italian, and African.
In addition, Rockdale has a lot of people living here who were born outside of the US (16.80%).
The most common language spoken in Rockdale is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Italian.
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.
Modes of Transportation
In the neighborhood, walking to work is a real option for many. In fact, NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research reveals walking to and from work is the chosen way to commute for 14.0% of residents here. This is a higher proportion of walking commuters than we found in 96.8% of American neighborhoods. Get ready to put on your walking shoes if you move here!
People
Whether by choice, divorce, or unplanned pregnancy, single moms may have the toughest job in the book. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that the neighborhood has more single mother households than 95.3% of the neighborhoods in the U.S. Often high concentrations of single mother homes can be a strong indicator of family and social issues such as poverty, high rates of school dropouts, crime, and other societal problems.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Croatian and Slovak ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 2.1% of this neighborhood's residents have Croatian ancestry and 2.9% have Slovak ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 1.4% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Greek at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 98.1% 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 Rockdale are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 80.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 27.8% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 78.9% 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, 34.4% of the working population is employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 33.5% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (16.9%), and 15.2% 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 78.6% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, Italian and Polish.
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 Rockdale, IL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (38.9%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (21.0%), and residents who report Polish roots (11.6%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (9.2%), along with some German ancestry residents (7.7%), among others. In addition, 15.2% 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 between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (33.8% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (65.4%) 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 (18.5%) and 14.0% of residents also hop out the door and walk to work 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.
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.
