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.
Dowling is a tiny town located in the state of Michigan. With a population of 351 people and just one neighborhood, Dowling is the 606th largest community in Michigan. Dowling has an unusually large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic towns.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Dowling is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 48.18% of the Dowling workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Dowling is a town of construction workers and builders, sales and office workers, and production and manufacturing workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Dowling who work in sales jobs (16.79%), personal care services (6.57%), and office and administrative support (5.84%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Dowling’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.
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!) Dowling 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. Dowling has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Dowling than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Dowling may be for you.
One downside of living in Dowling, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 30.81 minutes every day commuting to work.
Being a small town, Dowling does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
In Dowling, just 12.56% 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 Dowling in 2022 was $28,971, which is middle income relative to Michigan, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $115,884 for a family of four.
Dowling is a very ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Dowling home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Dowling residents report their race to be White. Dowling also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 14.89% of the town’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Dowling include German, Scottish, Irish, English, and Polish.
The most common language spoken in Dowling is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
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 Dowling, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Occupations
It used to be that most Americans lived on the farm, or otherwise made their living from the land, the forests, or the sea. With global trade and an economy increasingly based on providing services to one another, fewer people farm, fish or harvest timber now than at any time in American history. But according to NeighborhoodScout's leading analysis, the neighborhood stands apart from most American neighborhood due to the proportion of its residents still working in these fields. With 3.5% of the workforce so employed, this neighborhood has a greater concentration of such workers than 95.0% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Dutch ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 6.5% of this neighborhood's residents have Dutch ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 1.8% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak German/Yiddish at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 95.8% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 Dowling are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 44.5% of the neighborhoods in America. With 21.8% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 71.4% 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, 38.0% 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 30.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (17.7%), and 10.6% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 94.4% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (3.7%).
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 Dowling, MI, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (29.0%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (12.9%), and residents who report Irish roots (7.1%), and some of the residents are also of Dutch ancestry (6.5%), along with some Mexican ancestry residents (4.1%), 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 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (41.8% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (80.9%) 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 (11.3%) . 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.
