Ashford is a very small town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 3,480 people and just one neighborhood, Ashford is the 52nd largest community in West Virginia.
Ashford is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Ashford is a town of professionals, sales and office workers, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Ashford who work in office and administrative support (21.17%), teaching (13.20%), and healthcare (10.27%).
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!) Ashford 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. Ashford has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Ashford than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Ashford may be for you.
In Ashford, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 36.59 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average.
Being a small town, Ashford does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
In Ashford, just 12.12% 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 Ashford in 2022 was $25,276, 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 $101,104 for a family of four. However, Ashford contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Ashford home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Ashford residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Ashford include German, Irish, English, Italian, and Scots-Irish.
The most common language spoken in Ashford is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian 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.
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 Ashford are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 66.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 24.5% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 75.6% 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, 33.8% 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 28.6% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (25.8%), and 11.8% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.2% of households. Some people also speak Italian (3.1%).
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 Ashford, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (9.0%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (8.5%), and residents who report English roots (5.8%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (3.0%), along with some Scots-Irish ancestry residents (2.2%), 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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (33.1% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (78.9%) 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 (14.2%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.