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.
Leaf River is a tiny village located in the state of Illinois. With a population of 423 people and just one neighborhood, Leaf River is the 761st largest community in Illinois.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Leaf River is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 37.08% of the Leaf River workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Leaf River is a village of service providers, sales and office workers, and production and manufacturing workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Leaf River who work in office and administrative support (11.25%), sales jobs (10.42%), and law enforcement and fire fighting (8.75%).
Setting & Lifestyle
The overall crime rate in Leaf River is one of the lowest in the US. This makes it one of the safer places to live in the country in terms of crime.
It is a fairly quiet village 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!) Leaf River 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. Leaf River has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Leaf River than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Leaf River may be for you.
One downside of living in Leaf River, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 34.70 minutes every day commuting to work.
As is often the case in a small village, Leaf River doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The citizens of Leaf River are slightly less educated than the national average of 21.84% for the average city or town: 13.85% of adults in Leaf River have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree
The per capita income in Leaf River in 2022 was $32,797, which is middle income relative to Illinois and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $131,188 for a family of four. However, Leaf River contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Leaf River home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Leaf River residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Leaf River include German, English, Irish, Swedish, and Italian.
The most common language spoken in Leaf River is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian 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 Leaf River, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
People
According to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, is among the best neighborhoods for families in Illinois. In fact, this neighborhood is more family-friendly than 95.9% of neighborhoods in the entire state of Illinois. Its combination of top public schools, low crime rates, and owner-occupied single family homes gives this area the look and feel of a "Leave It to Beaver" episode. Many other families also live here, making it easy to socialize and develop a strong sense of community. In addition, the high number of college-educated parents influences the academic success of the local schools. Overall, you will find all of the amenities a family needs to thrive in the neighborhood.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Swedish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 9.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Swedish ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 0.9% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Greek at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 96.1% 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 Leaf River are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 73.5% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 3.0% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 71.4% of America'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 neighborhood, 40.1% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 23.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (22.1%), and 12.2% in clerical, assistant, and tech support 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 92.9% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Italian.
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 Leaf River, IL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (28.1%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (14.9%), and residents who report Irish roots (10.5%), and some of the residents are also of Swedish ancestry (9.8%), along with some Mexican ancestry residents (7.0%), 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 (27.5% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (80.1%) 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 (7.0%) . 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.
