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.
Hico is a tiny town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 239 people and just one neighborhood, Hico is the 243rd largest community in West Virginia. Much of the housing stock in Hico was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic towns in the country.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Hico is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 38.89% of the Hico workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Hico is a town of service providers, construction workers and builders, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Hico who work in personal care services (61.11%), office and administrative support (0.00%), and sales jobs (0.00%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Hico’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.
One downside of living in Hico, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 46.67 minutes every day commuting to work.
Hico is a very car-oriented town. 100.00% of residents commute to work in a private automobile rather than by other means, such as public transit, bicycling, or walking. This is because Hico is a small town , and most people who live here have to drive out of town for work, and the town population is not large nor dense enough to support an extensive public transportation system. Hico has a lot of rural roads, and houses can be far apart. Many residents drive out of town for regular shopping trips as well.
Being a small town, Hico does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
Do you have a 4-year college degree or graduate degree? If so, you may feel right at home in Hico. 61.11% of adults here have a 4-year degree or graduate degree, whereas the national average for all cities and towns is just 21.84%.
The per capita income in Hico in 2022 was $11,761, which is low income relative to West Virginia and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $47,044 for a family of four. Hico also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 85.57% of its population below the federal poverty line.
The people who call Hico home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Hico residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Hico include Yugoslavian, Other West Indian, West Indian, U.S. Virgin Islander, and Trinidadian and Tobagonian.
The most common language spoken in Hico is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and African languages.
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 Hico, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
People
Of note is NeighborhoodScout's research finding that the neighborhood has some of the lowest rates of children living in poverty of any neighborhood in the United States. In a nation where approximately 1 in 4 children are living in poverty, the community truly stands out from the rest in this regard.
In addition, astoundingly, NeighborhoodScout's research reveals that this single neighborhood has a higher concentration of married couples living here than 97.4% of all U.S. neighborhoods. Whether they have school-aged children or not, married couples are the rule in the neighborhood. If you are a married couple, you may find many people here with a similar lifestyle, and perhaps common interests. But if you are single, you might not find many other singles here.
Also, the neighborhood is a great option for families, as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's research on this neighborhood. The combination of top public schools, low crime rates, and owner-occupied single family homes, make this neighborhood among the top 7.1% of family-friendly neighborhoods in the state of West Virginia. Many other families also live here, making it easy to socialize and develop a sense of community. In addition, families here highly value education, as is reflected by the strength of the local schools. In addition to being an excellent choice for families with school-aged children, this neighborhood is also a very good choice for active retirees and highly educated executives.
Modes of Transportation
While most Americans do drive to work alone each day, the neighborhood stands out by having 93.9% of commuters doing so, which is a higher proportion of people driving alone to work than NeighborhoodScout found in 99.4% of all American neighborhoods.
Real Estate
This neighborhood has wide open spaces, few people, and lots of space to stretch out. If you like locations that fit that description, you may like this neighborhood. Based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, with only 22 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 94.3% of America.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Czechoslovakian and English ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 0.6% of this neighborhood's residents have Czechoslovakian ancestry and 22.0% have English ancestry.
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 Hico are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 67.7% of U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, 0.0% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 100.0% of America'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, 34.3% 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 30.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (27.2%), and 9.7% in government jobs, whether they are in local, state, or federal positions.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 100.0% of households. Some people also speak Italian (2.5%).
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 Hico, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (22.0%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (18.1%), and residents who report Irish roots (13.7%), and some of the residents are also of Swedish ancestry (2.8%), along with some Dutch ancestry residents (1.2%), 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 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (34.9% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (93.9%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. 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.
