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 1,972 people and just one neighborhood, Rockdale is the 577th largest community in Illinois.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some villages where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Rockdale is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-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 sales jobs (14.45%), office and administrative support (13.95%), and food service (10.41%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Overall, Rockdale’s crime rate is one of the lowest in the nation, which makes a great place to live if safety is an important concern.
As is often the case in a small village, Rockdale doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
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 12.11% of people over 25 have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Rockdale in 2022 was $26,405, which is low income relative to Illinois, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $105,620 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. People of Hispanic or Latino origin are the most prevalent group in Rockdale, accounting for 45.23% of the village’s residents (people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race). The greatest number of Rockdale residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Rockdale include Irish, Polish, Italian, German, and African.
The most common language spoken in Rockdale is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Italian.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
Many things matter about a neighborhood, but the first thing most people notice is the way a neighborhood looks and its particular character. For example, one might notice whether the buildings all date from a certain time period or whether shop signs are in multiple languages. This particular neighborhood in Rockdale, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
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 11.4% of residents here. This is a higher proportion of walking commuters than we found in 95.7% of American neighborhoods. Get ready to put on your walking shoes if you move here!
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, 1.5% of this neighborhood's residents have Croatian ancestry and 1.7% 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 72.4% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 29.7% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 81.5% of U.S. neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the neighborhood, 33.1% 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 31.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (18.0%), and 17.8% in executive, management, and professional 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 82.2% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, Italian and Polish.
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 Rockdale, IL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (41.8%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (17.8%), and residents who report Polish roots (11.1%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (9.3%), along with some German ancestry residents (7.2%), among others. In addition, 11.4% 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (32.6% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (70.4%) 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 (14.2%) and 11.4% 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.
