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.
Sprague is a very small town located in the state of Connecticut. With a population of 2,940 people and just one neighborhood, Sprague is the 150th largest community in Connecticut. Sprague has a large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic towns in the country.
Occupations and Workforce
Sprague is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Sprague is a town of sales and office workers, professionals, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Sprague who work in management occupations (11.21%), office and administrative support (10.75%), and sales jobs (10.16%).
Of important note, Sprague is also a town of artists. Sprague has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Sprague’s character.
Setting & Lifestyle
Sprague’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!) Sprague 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. Sprague has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Sprague than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Sprague may be for you.
One downside of living in Sprague is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Sprague, the average commute to work is 31.28 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average.
Demographics
In terms of college education, Sprague is nearly on par with the US average for all cities of 21.84%: 20.96% of adults 25 and older in Sprague have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Sprague in 2022 was $40,239, which is low income relative to Connecticut, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $160,956 for a family of four. However, Sprague contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Sprague is a very ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Sprague home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Sprague residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Sprague include Irish, French, Polish, Italian, and English.
The most common language spoken in Sprague is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and Italian.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
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.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more French and French Canadian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 10.5% of this neighborhood's residents have French ancestry and 4.1% have French Canadian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 18.2% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Polish at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.6% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 Sprague are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 65.3% of the neighborhoods in America. With 17.7% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 65.8% 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, 35.5% 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 25.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (24.9%), and 14.0% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
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 93.8% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and Italian.
Ethnicity / Ancestry
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 Sprague, CT, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (12.1%). There are also a number of people of French ancestry (10.5%), and residents who report Puerto Rican roots (8.7%), and some of the residents are also of Polish ancestry (8.6%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (8.1%), among others.
Getting to Work
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 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (39.4% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (88.0%) 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 (5.1%) . 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.
