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.
Ridge Farm is a tiny village located in the state of Illinois. With a population of 756 people and just one neighborhood, Ridge Farm is the 709th largest community in Illinois. Ridge Farm has an unusually large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic villages.
Occupations and Workforce
Ridge Farm is a blue-collar town, with 41.53% of people working in blue-collar occupations, while the average in America is just 27.7%. Overall, Ridge Farm is a village of transportation and shipping workers, service providers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Ridge Farm who work in management occupations (9.90%), healthcare (7.67%), and maintenance occupations (6.39%).
A relatively large number of people in Ridge Farm telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 10.86% of the workforce works from home. While this may seem like a small number, as a fraction of the total workforce it ranks among the highest in the country. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.
Setting & Lifestyle
The village is relatively quiet, having a combination of lower population density and few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. For example, Ridge Farm has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Ridge Farm a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
One downside of living in Ridge Farm is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Ridge Farm, the average commute to work is 33.11 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average.
As is often the case in a small village, Ridge Farm doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The population of Ridge Farm has one of the lowest overall levels of education in the country: only 5.67% of people over 25 hold a college degree. The national average for all municipalities is 21.84%.
The per capita income in Ridge Farm in 2022 was $23,885, which is low income relative to Illinois and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $95,540 for a family of four. However, Ridge Farm contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Ridge Farm is a somewhat ethnically-diverse village. The people who call Ridge Farm home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Ridge Farm residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Ridge Farm also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 10.36% of the village’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Ridge Farm include Irish, German, Italian, English, and Scots-Irish.
The most common language spoken in Ridge Farm is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Spanish.
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 Ridge Farm, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
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 92.2% 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 Ridge Farm are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 71.8% of U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, 3.2% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 70.6% of America'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, 38.0% 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 34.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (13.1%), and 11.9% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.4% of households.
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 Ridge Farm, IL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (13.8%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (12.8%), and residents who report Irish roots (11.4%), and some of the residents are also of Mexican ancestry (3.9%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (2.2%), 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 between 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (29.7% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (82.7%) 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 (7.6%) . 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.
