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.
Stephenson is a tiny city located in the state of Michigan. With a population of 799 people and just one neighborhood, Stephenson is the 513th largest community in Michigan.
Occupations and Workforce
When you are in Stephenson, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 39.68% of Stephenson’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. Overall, Stephenson is a city of production and manufacturing workers, professionals, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Stephenson who work in office and administrative support (10.32%), healthcare suport services (7.41%), and healthcare (7.41%).
Of important note, Stephenson is also a city of artists. Stephenson has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Stephenson’s character.
Setting & Lifestyle
Stephenson’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.
Residents will find that the city is relatively quiet. This is because it is not over-populated, and it has fewer college students, renters, and young children - all of whom can be noisy at times. So, if you're looking for a relatively peaceful place to live, Stephenson is worth considering.
Being a small city, Stephenson does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
The citizens of Stephenson are slightly less educated than the national average of 21.84% for the average city or town: 15.96% of adults in Stephenson have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree
The per capita income in Stephenson in 2022 was $23,848, which is low income relative to Michigan and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $95,392 for a family of four. However, Stephenson contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Stephenson home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Stephenson residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Stephenson include German, Polish, French, Swedish, and Irish.
The most common language spoken in Stephenson is English. Other important languages spoken here include Native American languages and Spanish.
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 Stephenson, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Real Estate
Vacant homes and apartments are a significant characteristic of this neighborhood. In fact, with 32.3% of the residential real estate vacant, the neighborhood claims the distinction of having a higher vacancy rate than 95.9% of the neighborhoods in America. This can either be because much of the property is seasonally occupied, like in many vacation areas, or that much of the real estate is more permanently abandoned.
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 16 residents per square mile, is less crowded than 95.6% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
People
If you're planning where to retire, the neighborhood in Stephenson 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 MI, 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 88.1% of the neighborhoods in Michigan. If you are considering retiring to Michigan, this is a good neighborhood to look at.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Belgian and Finnish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 3.4% of this neighborhood's residents have Belgian ancestry and 3.1% have Finnish ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 1.4% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Native American languages at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 98.4% 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 Stephenson are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 67.9% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 15.6% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 62.1% 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, 32.3% 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 30.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (23.8%), and 11.9% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 97.1% 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 Stephenson, MI, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (22.8%). There are also a number of people of Native American ancestry (11.2%), and residents who report Polish roots (9.9%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (7.3%), along with some French Canadian ancestry residents (6.5%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (33.4% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (80.6%) 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 (10.8%) . 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.
