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.
Ridgeway is a tiny city located in the state of Iowa. With a population of 267 people and just one neighborhood, Ridgeway is the 422nd largest community in Iowa.
Ridgeway real estate is some of the most expensive in Iowa, although Ridgeway house values don't compare to the most expensive real estate in the U.S.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Ridgeway is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 51.90% of the Ridgeway workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Ridgeway is a city of production and manufacturing workers, sales and office workers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Ridgeway who work in office and administrative support (12.03%), teaching (8.23%), and farm management occupations (7.59%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Ridgeway’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.
It is a fairly quiet city 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!) Ridgeway 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. Ridgeway has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Ridgeway than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Ridgeway may be for you.
Ridgeway is a small city, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
Demographics
In terms of college education, Ridgeway is nearly on par with the US average for all cities of 21.84%: 18.75% of adults 25 and older in Ridgeway have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Ridgeway in 2022 was $31,565, which is lower middle income relative to Iowa, and middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $126,260 for a family of four. However, Ridgeway contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Ridgeway home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Ridgeway residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Ridgeway include Norwegian, Irish, German, English, and Italian.
The most common language spoken in Ridgeway is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Persian.
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 Ridgeway, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Occupations
It used to be that most Americans lived on the farm, or otherwise made their living from the land, the forests, or the sea. With global trade and an economy increasingly based on providing services to one another, fewer people farm, fish or harvest timber now than at any time in American history. But according to NeighborhoodScout's leading analysis, the neighborhood stands apart from most American neighborhood due to the proportion of its residents still working in these fields. With 5.5% of the workforce so employed, this neighborhood has a greater concentration of such workers than 97.2% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Real Estate
Unpopulated, and rural, the neighborhood is one of the least crowded neighborhoods in all of America. If you like open space, no traffic, and lots of room, this neighborhood may be just what you are looking for. According to NeighborhoodScout's leading research, this neighborhood is less densely populated than 96.6% of the neighborhoods in America.
People
The neighborhood is a great option for families, as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's research on this neighborhood. The combination of top public schools, low crime rates, and owner-occupied single family homes, make this neighborhood among the top 9.7% of family-friendly neighborhoods in the state of Iowa. Many other families also live here, making it easy to socialize and develop a sense of community. In addition, families here highly value education, as is reflected by the strength of the local schools.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Norwegian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 38.1% of this neighborhood's residents have Norwegian ancestry.
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 Ridgeway are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 49.3% of the neighborhoods in America. With 17.6% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 64.9% 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, 38.1% 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 28.6% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (17.3%), and 10.6% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.2% of households.
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 Ridgeway, IA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Norwegian (38.1%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (28.2%), and residents who report Irish roots (9.2%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (6.1%), along with some Swedish ancestry residents (2.0%), 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 between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (46.5% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (79.7%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. 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.
