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 969 people and just one neighborhood, Palo Alto is the 839th largest community in Pennsylvania. Palo Alto has an unusually large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic boroughs.
Occupations and Workforce
When you are in Palo Alto, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 35.96% of Palo Alto’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. 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 office and administrative support (11.70%), sales jobs (9.57%), and healthcare suport services (9.15%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Overall, Palo Alto’s crime rate is one of the lowest in the nation, which makes a great place to live if safety is an important concern.
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
The percentage of people in Palo Alto with college degrees is quite a bit lower than the national average for cities and towns of 21.84%: just 10.80% of people over 25 have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Palo Alto in 2022 was $26,990, which is lower middle income relative to Pennsylvania and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $107,960 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
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 Palo Alto, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
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 27.2% 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, if you find historic homes and neighborhoods attractive, you love the details, the history, and the charm, then you are sure to be interested in this neighborhood. With 57.0% of the residential real estate in the neighborhood built no later than 1939, and some built considerably earlier, this neighborhood has a greater concentration of historic residences than 95.7% of all neighborhoods in America. In this regard, this neighborhood truly stands out as special.
People
With a nice mix of college students, safety from crime, and decent walkability, the neighborhood rates highly as a college student friendly place to live, and one that college students and their parents may want to consider. NeighborhoodScout's analysis shows that it rates more highly for a good place for college students to live than 89.3% of the neighborhoods in PA. This often also means that the area has certain amenities and services geared towards college students, from undergraduates to graduate students.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Lithuanian and Ukrainian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 3.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Lithuanian ancestry and 3.4% have Ukrainian 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 71.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 16.3% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 62.5% of U.S. neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the neighborhood, 37.6% 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 23.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (21.2%), and 18.1% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.5% of households. Some people also speak Polish (8.9%).
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 Palo Alto, PA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (32.9%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (22.7%), and residents who report Polish roots (14.5%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (8.0%), along with some Dutch ancestry residents (5.4%), 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 (43.9% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (82.3%) 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 (10.7%) . 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.
