Santa Maria is a tiny town located in the state of Texas. With a population of 651 people and just one neighborhood, Santa Maria is the 903rd largest community in Texas.
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Santa Maria is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 35.15% of the Santa Maria workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Santa Maria is a town of service providers, sales and office workers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Santa Maria who work in sales jobs (16.83%), management occupations (11.39%), and healthcare suport services (9.90%).
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!) Santa Maria 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. Santa Maria has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Santa Maria than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Santa Maria may be for you.
Being a small town, Santa Maria does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
The population of Santa Maria has one of the lowest overall levels of education in the country: only 3.54% of people over 25 hold a college degree. The national average for all municipalities is 21.84%.
The per capita income in Santa Maria in 2022 was $17,122, which is low income relative to Texas and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $68,488 for a family of four. However, Santa Maria contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Santa Maria also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 31.17% of its population below the federal poverty line.
Santa Maria is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Santa Maria home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. People of Hispanic or Latino origin are the most prevalent group in Santa Maria, accounting for 100.00% of the town’s residents (people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race). The greatest number of Santa Maria residents report their race to be Native Hawaiian. Important ancestries of people in Santa Maria include Yugoslavian, Other West Indian, West Indian, U.S. Virgin Islander, and Trinidadian and Tobagonian.
Foreign born people are also an important part of Santa Maria's cultural character, accounting for 34.17% of the town’s population.
The most common language spoken in Santa Maria is Spanish. Other important languages spoken here include English and African languages.
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 Santa Maria, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Mexican ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 95.1% of this neighborhood's residents have Mexican ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 79.8% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Spanish at home. This is a higher percentage than 98.7% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
The freedom of moving to new places versus the comfort of home. How much and how often people move not only can create diverse and worldly neighborhoods, but simultaneously it can produce a loss of intimacy with one's surroundings and a lack of connectedness to one's neighbors. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research has identified this neighborhood as unique with regard to the transience of its populace. More residents of the neighborhood live here today that also were living in this same neighborhood five years ago than is found in 98.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. This neighborhood is really made up of people who know each other, don't move often, and have lived here in this very neighborhood for quite a while.
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 neighborhood in Santa Maria are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 75.7% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 25.4% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 76.8% 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, 36.5% 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 26.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (21.2%), and 14.2% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is Spanish, spoken by 79.8% of households. Some people also speak English (20.2%).
Culture is the shared learned behavior of peoples. Undeniably, different ethnicities and ancestries have different cultural traditions, and as a result, neighborhoods with concentrations of residents of one or another ethnicities or ancestries will express those cultures. It is what makes the North End in Boston so fun to visit for the Italian restaurants, bakeries, culture, and charm, and similarly, why people enjoy visiting Chinatown in San Francisco.
In the neighborhood in Santa Maria, TX, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (95.1%). There are also a number of people of Polish ancestry (1.3%). In addition, 35.1% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
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 (30.8% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (87.8%) 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 (6.0%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.