Benton Harbor, MI (Fair Plain East)

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 Fair Plain East neighborhood in Benton Harbor are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 90.3% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 52.5% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 94.9% 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 Fair Plain East neighborhood, 35.0% 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 manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 30.4% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (21.0%), and 13.7% in executive, management, and professional occupations.

Languages

The most common language spoken in the Fair Plain East neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.5% of households. Some people also speak Polish (2.6%).

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 Fair Plain East neighborhood in Benton Harbor, MI, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Sub-Saharan African (11.1%). There are also a number of people of African ancestry (11.1%), and residents who report English roots (11.1%), and some of the residents are also of German ancestry (9.4%), along with some Irish ancestry residents (8.0%), among others.

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 Fair Plain East neighborhood spend under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (56.2% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.

Here most residents (81.2%) 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 (11.7%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.