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.
Branch is a tiny town located in the state of Louisiana. With a population of 431 people and just one neighborhood, Branch is the 295th largest community in Louisiana.
Occupations and Workforce
Branch is a decidedly white-collar town, with fully 94.50% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Branch is a town of sales and office workers, service providers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Branch who work in office and administrative support (73.39%), law enforcement and fire fighting (21.10%), and sales jobs (0.00%).
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 12.12% of the workforce. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce this is high compared to the rest of the county. 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
Residents will find that the town is relatively quiet. This is because it is not over-populated, and it has fewer college students, renters, and young children - all of whom can be noisy at times. So, if you're looking for a relatively peaceful place to live, Branch is worth considering.
One downside of living in Branch, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 39.05 minutes every day commuting to work.
Branch is a small town, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
Demographics
The population of Branch has one of the lowest overall levels of education in the country: only 0.00% of people over 25 hold a college degree. The national average for all municipalities is 21.84%.
The per capita income in Branch in 2022 was $15,143, which is low income relative to Louisiana and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $60,572 for a family of four. However, Branch contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Branch also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 38.51% of its population below the federal poverty line.
Branch is a very ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Branch home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Branch residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Branch include French, Acadian/Cajun, Yugoslavian, Other West Indian, and West Indian.
The most common language spoken in Branch is English. Other important languages spoken here include French and French Creole.
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 Branch, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Real Estate
With a real estate vacancy rate of only 0.0%, the neighborhood has a lower vacancy rate than 100.0% of U.S. neighborhoods, a very elite group. Such a low vacancy rate may indicate very strong real estate demand in the neighborhood combined with some impediments to increasing supply, such as zoning or existing density of development, among other potential reasons.
In addition, this neighborhood has wide open spaces, few people, and lots of space to stretch out. If you like locations that fit that description, you may like this neighborhood. Based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, with only 41 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 90.8% of America.
People
Of particular note, 3.0% of the people in the neighborhood currently reside in a correction facility, held due to punishment for a crime.
In addition, if you're looking for a great spot to raise a family, then look no further than the neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's analysis found that the combination of good quality public schools, above-average safety from crime, and a high rate of home ownership in predominantly single-family homes, help make this neighborhood among the top 10.2% of family-friendly neighborhoods across the state of Louisiana. In addition, there are a high proportion of other families with school-aged children living here, making it easy for parents and their children to socialize and develop a sense of community support. In addition, families here highly value education, as is reflected by the strength of the local schools, in part due to the educational attainment of the parents here, who vote in support of the public schools.
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 11.6% 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 French and Norwegian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 28.2% of this neighborhood's residents have French ancestry and 5.5% have Norwegian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 5.3% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak French at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 97.7% 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 Branch are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 55.2% of the neighborhoods in America. With 11.1% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 51.9% 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, 29.3% of the working population is employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations, with 28.7% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (22.8%), and 19.2% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 94.7% of households. Some people also speak French (5.3%).
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 Branch, LA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as French (28.2%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (13.9%), and residents who report Norwegian roots (5.5%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (1.2%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (1.1%), 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 (37.8% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (74.6%) 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 (11.6%) and 10.0% 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.
