Kent City is a very small village located in the state of Michigan. With a population of 1,365 people and just one neighborhood, Kent City is the 442nd largest community in Michigan.
When you are in Kent City, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 40.43% of Kent City’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. Overall, Kent City is a village of sales and office workers, transportation and shipping workers, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Kent City who work in sales jobs (16.55%), food service (7.46%), and office and administrative support (6.78%).
Being a small village, Kent City does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
The rate of college-level education in Kent City is quite a bit lower than the national average among all cities of 21.84%: just 10.64% of people here over 25 have a bachelor's degree or an advanced degree.
The per capita income in Kent City in 2022 was $24,770, which is lower middle income relative to Michigan and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $99,080 for a family of four. However, Kent City contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Kent City is a very ethnically-diverse village. The people who call Kent City home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Kent City residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Kent City also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 22.55% of the village’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Kent City include German, English, Dutch, Irish, and Polish.
Foreign born people are also an important part of Kent City's cultural character, accounting for 19.94% of the village’s population.
The most common language spoken in Kent City is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish 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.
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 7.2% of the workforce so employed, this neighborhood has a greater concentration of such workers than 98.2% of U.S. neighborhoods.
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, 16.6% of this neighborhood's residents have Dutch ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 1.1% 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 97.2% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 Kent City are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 46.4% of the neighborhoods in America. With 10.5% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 50.5% 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 neighborhood, 35.8% 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 23.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (21.3%), and 11.8% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
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 87.4% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
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 Kent City, MI, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (18.5%). There are also a number of people of Dutch ancestry (16.6%), and residents who report Mexican roots (10.0%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (9.8%), along with some English ancestry residents (9.1%), 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 neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (33.2% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (82.5%) 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 (5.2%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.