menu

Columbia, CT

This is a small community in a single neighborhood. As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.





Overview


Columbia is a somewhat small town located in the state of Connecticut. With a population of 5,258 people and just one neighborhood, Columbia is the 127th largest community in Connecticut.

Occupations and Workforce

Unlike some towns, Columbia isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Columbia are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Columbia is a town of managers, professionals, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Columbia who work in management occupations (17.24%), sales jobs (9.20%), and office and administrative support (8.74%).

Also of interest is that Columbia has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.

A relatively large number of people in Columbia telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 12.75% of the workforce works from home. While this may seem like a small number, as a fraction of the total workforce it ranks among the highest in the country. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.

Setting & Lifestyle

Because of many things, Columbia is a great place for families with children to consider. First of all, many other families with children live here, making Columbia a place where both parents and children are more likely to develop social ties with other families, as well as find family-oriented services and community. The town’s good public school district and large population of college-educated adults provide an environment conducive to academic values. With regard to real estate, Columbia has a high rate of owner-occupied single family homes, which tends to reflect stability in the local community. Finally, Columbia’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the country, making it one of the safest places to raise a family.

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, Columbia has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Columbia a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.

One downside of living in Columbia, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 30.62 minutes every day commuting to work.

Columbia is a small town, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.

Demographics

The education level of Columbia citizens is very high relative to the national average among all cities (21.84%): 34.13% of adults in Columbia have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree.

The per capita income in Columbia in 2018 was $52,839, which is upper middle income relative to Connecticut, and wealthy relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $211,356 for a family of four. However, Columbia contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

The people who call Columbia home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Columbia residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Columbia include Italian, Irish, English, German, and French.

The most common language spoken in Columbia is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Spanish.

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.

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.

Diversity

Did you know that the neighborhood has more Eastern European and French Canadian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 1.5% of this neighborhood's residents have Eastern European ancestry and 2.7% have French Canadian ancestry.

is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 21.8% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Italian at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.8% 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 Columbia are wealthy, making it among the 15% highest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 87.4% of the neighborhoods in America. 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, 49.0% 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 23.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (14.2%), and 12.9% 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 95.1% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Spanish.

Ethnicity / Ancestry

Boston's Beacon Hill blue-blood streets, Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish enclaves, Los Angeles' Persian neighborhoods. Each has its own culture derived primarily from the ancestries and culture of the residents who call these neighborhoods home. Likewise, each neighborhood in America has its own culture – some more unique than others – based on lifestyle, occupations, the types of households – and importantly – on the ethnicities and ancestries of the people who live in the neighborhood. Understanding where people came from, who their grandparents or great-grandparents were, can help you understand how a neighborhood is today.

In the neighborhood in Columbia, CT, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Italian (14.3%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (12.5%), and residents who report English roots (11.8%), and some of the residents are also of German ancestry (10.9%), along with some French ancestry residents (6.5%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (29.2% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.

Here most residents (81.1%) 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 (6.1%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.


Real Estate includes:
Average Home Values
Rental Market
Housing Market Details
Neighborhood Setting
Economics & Demographics include:
Lifestyle & Special Character
Household Types
Commute To Work
Migration & Mobility
Race & Ethnic Diversity
Employment Industries & Occupations
Income & Unemployment Rate
Higher Education Attainment
Crime includes:
Neighborhood Crime Index
Crimes Per Square Mile
Property Crime Comparison
Violent Crime Comparison
Schools include:
School Ratings
Schools In District
Public School Test Scores
School District Enrollment
Educational Expenditures

comparable neighborhoods nearby