Ashford is a very small town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 3,480 people and just one neighborhood, Ashford is the 52nd largest community in West Virginia.
Unlike some towns, Ashford isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Ashford are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Ashford is a town of professionals, sales and office workers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Ashford who work in office and administrative support (21.39%), teaching (11.83%), and healthcare (9.98%).
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!) Ashford 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. Ashford has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Ashford than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Ashford may be for you.
One downside of living in Ashford, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 37.01 minutes every day commuting to work.
Being a small town, Ashford does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
In Ashford, just 11.19% of people have at least a bachelor's degree, which is quite a bit lower than the national average for cities and towns of 21.84%.
The per capita income in Ashford in 2022 was $25,205, which is middle income relative to West Virginia, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $100,820 for a family of four. However, Ashford contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Ashford home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Ashford residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Ashford include German, Irish, English, Italian, and Scots-Irish.
The most common language spoken in Ashford is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Polish.
When you see a neighborhood for the first time, the most important thing is often the way it looks, like its homes and its setting. Some places look the same, but they only reveal their true character after living in them for a while because they contain a unique mix of occupational or cultural groups. This neighborhood is very unique in some important ways, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive exploration and analysis.
Astoundingly, the neighborhood has one of the highest concentrations of divorcees living here than of any neighborhood, a higher concentration than NeighborhoodScout found in 95.6% of U.S. neighborhoods. This may be because people living here divorce more often than others, or that divorced people move here after they become divorced. If you are divorced, you will be in good company in this particular Ashford neighborhood.
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 Ashford are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 65.3% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 11.6% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 53.1% 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, 34.3% 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 29.4% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (24.7%), and 11.6% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.2% of households. Some people also speak Italian (3.1%).
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 Ashford, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (10.1%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (8.4%), and residents who report English roots (5.2%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (3.5%), along with some Scots-Irish ancestry residents (1.8%), among others.
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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (34.9% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (81.3%) 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 (12.9%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.