This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.
What do we mean by a neighborhood?
NeighborhoodScout® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. NeighborhoodScout contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
Ragland is a very small town located in the state of Alabama. With a population of 1,699 people and just one neighborhood, Ragland is the 250th largest community in Alabama.
Occupations and Workforce
When you are in Ragland, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 44.26% of Ragland’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. Overall, Ragland is a town of transportation and shipping workers, service providers, and production and manufacturing workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Ragland who work in sales jobs (8.43%), food service (8.43%), and management occupations (7.96%).
Setting & Lifestyle
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!) Ragland 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. Ragland has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Ragland than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Ragland may be for you.
Ragland 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.
Demographics
In Ragland, just 8.45% of people over 25 hold a college degree, which is very low compared to the rest of the nation, whereas the average among all cities is 21.84%.
The per capita income in Ragland in 2022 was $20,427, which is low income relative to Alabama and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $81,708 for a family of four. However, Ragland contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Ragland is a very ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Ragland home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Ragland residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Ragland include Irish, English, German, Scottish, and Italian.
The most common language spoken in Ragland is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
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 Ragland, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Occupations
There are more people living in the neighborhood employed as sales and service workers (55.3%) than almost any neighborhood in the country. From fast-food service workers to major sales accounts, sales and service workers make up the largest proportion of our national employment picture. But despite that size and importance nationally, this neighborhood still stands out as unique due to the dominance of people living here who work in such occupations.
Real Estate
The real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 96.7% of all neighborhoods in America, with 35.1% of the occupied housing here being classified as mobile homes. So if you are looking for a mobile home, or you like the look and feel of mobile home parks, this neighborhood might have the setting you desire.
In addition, uncrowded roads, rural America and space to be the individual you are. If you like these characteristics, this neighborhood may fit you. With just 45 residents per square mile, is less crowded than 90.2% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
People
If you're planning where to retire, the neighborhood in Ragland is a great option to consider. According to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive retirement dream area analysis, it's peaceful and quiet, has above average safety ratings compared to other neighborhoods in AL, offers a wide range of housing options, and has already attracted an enviable mix of college educated seniors. This neighborhood ranks as better for retirement living than 85.2% of the neighborhoods in Alabama. If you are considering retiring to Alabama, this is a good neighborhood to look at.
The Neighbors
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 Ragland are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 89.4% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 25.8% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 76.5% of U.S. neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the neighborhood, 44.7% 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 manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 32.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (18.2%), and 5.0% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.6% of households.
Ethnicity / Ancestry
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 Ragland, AL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (15.8%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (12.4%), and residents who report Scottish roots (4.5%), and some of the residents are also of Mexican ancestry (3.5%), along with some German ancestry residents (3.0%), among others.
Getting to Work
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 (36.8% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (80.1%) 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 (9.9%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
