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.
Nilwood is a tiny town located in the state of Illinois. With a population of 197 people and just one neighborhood, Nilwood is the 787th largest community in Illinois. Nilwood has an unusually large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic towns.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some towns where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Nilwood is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Nilwood is a town of service providers, sales and office workers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Nilwood who work in sales jobs (20.41%), food service (18.37%), and maintenance occupations (10.20%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Overall, Nilwood’s crime rate is one of the lowest in the nation, which makes a great place to live if safety is an important concern.
The town is relatively quiet, having a combination of lower population density and few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. For example, Nilwood has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Nilwood a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
Nilwood 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 Nilwood 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. Nilwood 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, Nilwood does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
The citizens of Nilwood have a very low rate of college education: just 9.52% of people over 25 have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree, compared to a national average of 21.84% for all cities.
The per capita income in Nilwood in 2022 was $23,041, which is low income relative to Illinois and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $92,164 for a family of four.
The people who call Nilwood home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Nilwood residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Nilwood include German, European, English, Irish, and Scots-Irish.
The most common language spoken in Nilwood is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian 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 Nilwood, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
People
An extraordinary 11.7% of the residents of the neighborhood are currently enrolled in college. This is such a large part of life in this neighborhood that the neighborhood changes a great deal with the change of semesters and is far quieter during the summer when many students are away.
In addition, if you're nearing retirement age, or in retirement, the is an excellent choice for you to consider for top-quality retirement living. This neighborhood is rated by NeighborhoodScout as among the top 8.8% of retiree-friendly neighborhoods in Illinois, combining peace and quiet, safety from crime, and offering diverse housing options from which retirees can choose. Maybe it's because of these amenities that a large proportion of the residents here are college educated seniors, mixed with other age groups. For these and other reasons, NeighborhoodScout identifies this neighborhood as a top-notch place to consider if you are thinking of or planning to retire in Illinois.
Real Estate
Unpopulated, and rural, the neighborhood is one of the least crowded neighborhoods in all of America. If you like open space, no traffic, and lots of room, this neighborhood may be just what you are looking for. According to NeighborhoodScout's leading research, this neighborhood is less densely populated than 95.5% of the neighborhoods in America.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more German and Lithuanian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 41.7% of this neighborhood's residents have German ancestry and 1.0% have Lithuanian 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 Nilwood are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 71.4% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 5.6% 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 62.0% of America'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 executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 25.3% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (18.2%), and 10.6% 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 96.4% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Italian, Spanish and Polish.
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 Nilwood, IL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (41.7%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (16.9%), and residents who report Irish roots (11.7%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (3.1%), along with some French ancestry residents (2.2%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (37.4% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (71.2%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also hop out the door and walk to work to get to work (7.8%) and 7.3% of residents also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors for their daily commute. 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.
