Alderson is a tiny town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 941 people and just one neighborhood, Alderson is the 158th largest community in West Virginia.
Alderson real estate is some of the most expensive in West Virginia, although Alderson house values don't compare to the most expensive real estate in the U.S.
Unlike some towns where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Alderson is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Alderson is a town of service providers, professionals, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Alderson who work in food service (17.53%), healthcare (12.71%), and maintenance occupations (11.34%).
Of important note, Alderson is also a town of artists. Alderson has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Alderson’s character.
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!) Alderson 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. Alderson has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Alderson than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Alderson may be for you.
Alderson is a small town, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
The rate of college-level education in Alderson is quite a bit lower than the national average among all cities of 21.84%: just 12.85% of people here over 25 have a bachelor's degree or an advanced degree.
The per capita income in Alderson in 2022 was $20,394, which is lower middle income relative to West Virginia, and low income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $81,576 for a family of four. Alderson also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 41.59% of its population below the federal poverty line.
The people who call Alderson home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Alderson residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Alderson include Irish, English, Swiss, German, and European.
The most common language spoken in Alderson is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and Italian.
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 Alderson, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
This neighborhood has wide open spaces, few people, and lots of space to stretch out. If you like locations that fit that description, you may like this neighborhood. Based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, with only 32 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 92.4% of America. One of the notable things about is that it is one of the quietest neighborhoods in America, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis and quantitative rating of quietness. When you are here, you will find it to be very quiet. If quiet and peaceful are your cup of tea, you may have found a great place for you.
Some neighborhoods have more internal cohesiveness than others. While other neighborhoods feel like a collection of strangers who just happen to live near each other. Sometimes this comes down to not only the personalities of the people in a place, but how long people have been together in that neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research has revealed some interesting things about the rootedness of people in the neighborhood. More residents of the neighborhood live here today that also were living in this same neighborhood five years ago than is found in 96.2% 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 Alderson are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 84.4% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 24.4% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 74.8% 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, 30.0% 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 executive, management, and professional occupations, with 29.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (26.9%), and 12.4% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.7% of households.
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 Alderson, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (10.7%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (9.6%), and residents who report English roots (5.9%), and some of the residents are also of Scots-Irish ancestry (2.9%), along with some Scottish ancestry residents (1.4%), among others.
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 (33.6% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (78.2%) 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 (16.4%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.