Sparta is a very small city located in the state of Illinois. With a population of 4,063 people and just one neighborhood, Sparta is the 389th largest community in Illinois.
Sparta is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Sparta is a city of service providers, professionals, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Sparta who work in office and administrative support (9.15%), teaching (9.09%), and management occupations (8.98%).
Sparta is a small city, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
The citizens of Sparta are slightly better educated than the national average of 21.84% for all cities and towns, with 21.14% of adults in Sparta having a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Sparta in 2022 was $34,407, which is middle income relative to Illinois and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $137,628 for a family of four. However, Sparta contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Sparta is a very ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Sparta home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Sparta residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Sparta include German, Scots-Irish, Irish, English, and Scottish.
The most common language spoken in Sparta is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and Spanish.
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.
If your dream is to be able to ride your bike to work each day, look no further than this unique neighborhood. With 2.7% of residents in the neighborhood commuting on a bicycle to and from work daily, this neighborhood has more bicycle commuters than 95.2% of all neighborhoods in the U.S., according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis.
If you're planning where to retire, the neighborhood in Sparta 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 IL, 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 89.3% of the neighborhoods in Illinois. If you are considering retiring to Illinois, this is a good neighborhood to look at.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Scots-Irish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 10.0% of this neighborhood's residents have Scots-Irish ancestry.
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 Sparta are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 65.8% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 16.8% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 63.5% 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, 33.9% 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 28.7% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (21.0%), and 15.1% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.9% of households. Some people also speak Polish (2.3%).
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 Sparta, IL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (27.2%). There are also a number of people of Scots-Irish ancestry (10.0%), and residents who report Irish roots (9.3%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (7.6%), along with some Scottish 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 (46.3% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (81.3%) 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 (13.5%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.