Van is a tiny town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 177 people and just one neighborhood, Van is the 258th largest community in West Virginia.
Van is a decidedly white-collar town, with fully 100.00% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Van is a town of professionals, service providers, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Van who work in healthcare (41.67%), community and social services (29.17%), and law enforcement and fire fighting (18.06%).
Van’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.
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!) Van 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. Van has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Van than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Van may be for you.
One downside of living in Van is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Van, the average commute to work is 38.75 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average.
Van is very much a car-oriented town. This is because the population of Van isn't large enough or dense enough to support an extensive public transit system. It has a lot of rural roads, and the distance between houses can be quite large, which together tends to discourage walking and bicycling to work. 100.00% of residents commute to work in their own car (and the drive is typically to a job out of town). People also tend to drive out of town for other services as well, such as shopping, doctors appointments, and more.
As is often the case in a small town, Van doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Van ranks among the bottom of the nation in terms of college education compared to other cities and towns: only 5.49% of people over 25 have a college degree.
The per capita income in Van in 2022 was $18,608, which is low income relative to West Virginia and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $74,432 for a family of four.
Van is a very ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Van home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Van residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Van include German, French, Greek, English, and Yugoslavian.
The most common language spoken in Van is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Polish.
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 Van, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
The neighborhood is unique for having just 2.4% of adults here having earned a bachelor's degree. This is a lower rate of college graduates than NeighborhoodScout found in 98.5% of America's neighborhoods.
In addition, one of the unique characteristics of the neighborhood revealed by analysis is that the per capita income of residents here is lower than that found in 95.1% of the neighborhoods in America.
Whether walking, biking, riding, or driving, the length of one's commute is an important factor for one's quality of life. The neighborhood stands out for its commute length, according to NeighborhoodScout's analysis. Long commutes can be brutal. They take time, money, and energy, leaving less of you for yourself and your family. The residents of the neighborhood unfortunately have the distinction of having, on average, a longer commute than most any neighborhood in America. 14.0% of commuters here travel more than one hour just one-way to work. That is more than two hours per day. This percentage with two-hour + round-trip commutes is higher than NeighborhoodScout found in 98.2% of all neighborhoods in America.
Our research reveals that 91.5% of commuters who live in the neighborhood get to work each day by driving alone in their automobiles, which is a higher proportion than 97.8% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Unpopulated, and rural, the neighborhood is one of the least crowded neighborhoods in all of America. If you like open space, no traffic, and lots of room, this neighborhood may be just what you are looking for. According to NeighborhoodScout's leading research, this neighborhood is less densely populated than 96.0% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 96.7% 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 Van are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 95.1% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 19.6% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 68.2% 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 executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 29.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (21.7%), 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 99.1% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Polish.
Boston's Beacon Hill blue-blood streets, Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish enclaves, Los Angeles' Persian neighborhoods. Each has its own culture derived primarily from the ancestries and culture of the residents who call these neighborhoods home. Likewise, each neighborhood in America has its own culture – some more unique than others – based on lifestyle, occupations, the types of households – and importantly – on the ethnicities and ancestries of the people who live in the neighborhood. Understanding where people came from, who their grandparents or great-grandparents were, can help you understand how a neighborhood is today.
In the neighborhood in Van, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (10.6%). There are also a number of people of Italian ancestry (6.8%), and residents who report Irish roots (5.4%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (3.0%), along with some Polish ancestry residents (2.8%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (25.9% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America. However, there is also a significant group of residents (14.0%) who commute over an hour in each direction.
Here most residents (91.5%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also hop out the door and walk to work to get to work (5.8%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.