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.
Mount Oliver is a very small borough located in the state of Pennsylvania. With a population of 3,302 people and just one neighborhood, Mount Oliver is the 448th largest community in Pennsylvania. Much of the housing stock in Mount Oliver was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic boroughs in the country.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some boroughs, Mount Oliver isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Mount Oliver are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Mount Oliver is a borough of service providers, professionals, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Mount Oliver who work in food service (15.74%), healthcare suport services (13.53%), and maintenance occupations (8.19%).
Also of interest is that Mount Oliver has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 11.74% of people work from home. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce it is high relative to the nation. 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
One downside of living in Mount Oliver, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 35.25 minutes every day commuting to work. It is, however, a pedestrian-friendly borough. Many of its neighborhoods are dense enough and have amenities close enough together that people find it feasible to get around on foot. In addition, local public transit is widely used. For those who would prefer to avoid driving entirely and leave their car at home, it may be an option to use the transit instead.
For a small borough, Mount Oliver has a lot of people who use public transit to get to work, and those that do mostly ride the bus. This suggests that a real need for low-cost transportation in Mount Oliver exists, and local transit is helping to meet that need.
Demographics
The percentage of adults in Mount Oliver with college degrees is slightly lower than the national average of 21.84% for all communities. 16.94% of adults in Mount Oliver have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Mount Oliver in 2022 was $21,794, which is low income relative to Pennsylvania and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $87,176 for a family of four. However, Mount Oliver contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Mount Oliver is an extremely ethnically-diverse borough. The people who call Mount Oliver home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Mount Oliver residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Mount Oliver include German, Italian, Polish, Irish, and English.
The most common language spoken in Mount Oliver is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
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.
Modes of Transportation
Our research revealed that more commuters here take the bus to work (29.9% ride the bus) than 99.6% of all American neighborhoods. If you like the idea of leaving your car and home and hopping the bus to work, this might be a good neighborhood for you to consider.
Car Ownership
We Americans love our cars. Not only are they a necessity for most Americans due to the shape of our neighborhoods and the distances between where we live, work, shop, and go to school, but we also fancy them. As a result, most households in America have one, two, or three cars. But NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis shows that the neighborhood has a highly unusual pattern of car ownership. 34.4% of the households in this neighborhood don't own a car at all. This is more carless households than NeighborhoodScout found in 97.6% of U.S. neighborhoods.
People
One of the most interesting things about the neighborhood is that it has a greater concentration of residents who live alone than most all neighborhoods in America. With 54.4% of the households here made up of people living alone, NeighborhoodScout's research reveals that this is a larger proportion of people living alone than in 97.5% of the neighborhoods in America.
Length of Commute
Regardless of the means by which residents commute, this neighborhood has a length of commute that is notable. Long commutes can be brutal. They take time, money, and energy, leaving less of you for yourself and your family. The residents of the neighborhood unfortunately have the distinction of having, on average, a longer commute than most any neighborhood in America. 10.9% of commuters here travel more than one hour just one-way to work. That is more than two hours per day. This percentage with two-hour + round-trip commutes is higher than NeighborhoodScout found in 96.3% of all neighborhoods in America.
Real Estate
Do you watch 'This Old House' on Public Television? Do you love the idea of fixing up a Colonial or Victorian era home, complete with the charm of yesteryear? Do you like to stroll or drive streets lined with gracious older residences? If you found yourself nodding yes to any of these questions, you are going to be interested in this unique neighborhood. The neighborhood stands out on a national scale for the sheer concentration of historic residences it contains: 59.8% of the residential real estate here was built from 1939 or earlier, some much earlier. This is a greater concentration of historic homes than 96.4% of the neighborhoods in the United States.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Polish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 9.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Polish ancestry.
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 Mount Oliver are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 93.6% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 20.8% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 70.0% 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, 33.3% 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 executive, management, and professional occupations, with 28.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (20.2%), and 18.4% in manufacturing and laborer 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 91.9% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
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 Mount Oliver, PA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (18.9%). There are also a number of people of Italian ancestry (10.8%), and residents who report Polish roots (9.8%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (8.2%), along with some Puerto Rican ancestry residents (4.5%), 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 (31.3% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans. However, there is also a significant group of residents (10.9%) who commute over an hour in each direction.
Here most residents (47.4%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also ride the bus to get to work (29.9%) and 8.9% 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.
