This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
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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.
Bowers is a tiny town located in the state of Pennsylvania. With a population of 355 people and just one neighborhood, Bowers is the 1037th largest community in Pennsylvania. Bowers has an unusually large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic towns.
Occupations and Workforce
Bowers is a blue-collar town, with 68.42% of people working in blue-collar occupations, while the average in America is just 27.7%. Overall, Bowers is a town of construction workers and builders, professionals, and production and manufacturing workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Bowers who work in healthcare (18.42%), personal care services (9.21%), and management occupations (3.95%).
Setting & Lifestyle
It is a fairly quiet town 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!) Bowers 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. Bowers has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Bowers than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Bowers may be for you.
In Bowers, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 36.51 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average.
Bowers is a very car-oriented town. 100.00% of residents commute to work in a private automobile rather than by other means, such as public transit, bicycling, or walking. This is because Bowers is a small town , and most people who live here have to drive out of town for work, and the town population is not large nor dense enough to support an extensive public transportation system. Bowers has a lot of rural roads, and houses can be far apart. Many residents drive out of town for regular shopping trips as well.
Being a small town, Bowers does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
Bowers ranks among the bottom of the nation in terms of college education compared to other cities and towns: only 1.49% of people over 25 have a college degree.
The per capita income in Bowers in 2022 was $29,411, which is lower middle income relative to Pennsylvania and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $117,644 for a family of four. However, Bowers contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Bowers home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Bowers residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Bowers include German, Irish, Italian, English, and Welsh.
The most common language spoken in Bowers is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and German/Yiddish.
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
An extraordinary 13.2% of the residents of the neighborhood are currently enrolled in college. This is such a large part of life in this neighborhood that the neighborhood changes a great deal with the change of semesters and is far quieter during the summer when many students are away.
In addition, 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 88.5% 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.
Modes of Transportation
Would you like to be able to ride your bike to work? If you are attracted to the idea of getting a little exercise of the two-wheeled type while reducing your carbon footprint, bicycling to work might be the answer. But which neighborhood you live in can make this either impossible, or alternatively, a great and realistic option. NeighborhoodScout's analysis revealed that the neighborhood is a fantastic option for bicycle commuters, as 2.7% of commuters here do ride their bikes to and from work on a daily basis. This is a higher amount than we found in 95.4% of the neighborhoods in America.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Welsh and Swiss ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 2.9% of this neighborhood's residents have Welsh ancestry and 1.5% have Swiss ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 8.7% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak German/Yiddish at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.5% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 Bowers are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 42.8% of the neighborhoods in America. With 13.9% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 58.9% 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, 32.9% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 27.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (22.6%), and 14.7% 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 81.9% of households. Other important languages spoken here include German/Yiddish and Spanish.
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 Bowers, PA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (33.8%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (7.4%), and residents who report Italian roots (5.7%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (4.7%), along with some South American ancestry residents (3.3%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (34.5% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (72.0%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also hop out the door and walk to work to get to work (7.5%) and 5.3% of residents also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors 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.
