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Alta, IA

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





Overview


Alta is a very small city located in the state of Iowa. With a population of 2,042 people and just one neighborhood, Alta is the 257th largest community in Iowa.

Occupations and Workforce

Alta is a blue-collar town, with 35.09% of people working in blue-collar occupations, while the average in America is just 27.7%. Overall, Alta is a city of professionals, sales and office workers, and production and manufacturing workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Alta who work in management occupations (10.74%), teaching (9.54%), and sales jobs (9.44%).

Setting & Lifestyle

Because of many things, Alta is a very good place for families to consider. With an enviable combination of good schools, low crime, college-educated neighbors who tend to support education because of their own experiences, and a high rate of home ownership in predominantly single-family properties, Alta really has some of the features that families look for when choosing a good community to raise children. Is Alta perfect? Of course not, and if you like frenetic nightlife, it will be far from your cup of tea. But overall this is a solid community, with many things to recommend it as a family-friendly place to live.

One of the benefits of Alta is that there is very little traffic. The average commute to work is 15.36 minutes, which is substantially less than the national average. Not only does this mean that the drive to work is less aggravating, but noise and pollution levels are lower as a result.

As is often the case in a small city, Alta doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.

Demographics

The citizens of Alta are slightly better educated than the national average of 21.84% for all cities and towns, with 21.26% of adults in Alta having a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.

The per capita income in Alta in 2018 was $29,608, which is low income relative to Iowa, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $118,432 for a family of four. However, Alta contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.

Alta is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Alta home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Alta residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Alta also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 15.22% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Alta include German, English, Swedish, Irish, and Norwegian.

Alta also has a high percentage of its population that was born in another country: 15.18%.

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

Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics

The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.

Length of Commute

Whether walking, biking, riding, or driving, the length of one's commute is an important factor for one's quality of life. The neighborhood stands out for its commute length, according to NeighborhoodScout's analysis. Residents of the neighborhood have the pleasure of having one of the shortest commutes to work of any neighborhood in America. 59.6% of the residents have a commute time from home to work (one way) of less than fifteen minutes. This is a higher proportion of residents enjoying a short trip to work than NeighborhoodScout found in 95.9% of U.S. neighborhoods. Less time commuting means more time for other things in life.

Real Estate

Uncrowded roads, rural America and space to be the individual you are. If you like these characteristics, this neighborhood may fit you. With just 30 residents per square mile, is less crowded than 92.8% of all U.S. neighborhoods.

Diversity

Did you know that the neighborhood has more Swedish and Danish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 6.0% of this neighborhood's residents have Swedish ancestry and 1.8% have Danish ancestry.

is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 0.5% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Urdu, which is the national language of Pakistan, at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 95.1% 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 Alta are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 65.6% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 7.3% 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 57.8% 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, 40.3% 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 24.5% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (20.5%), and 11.4% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.

Languages

The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 80.7% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (8.7%).

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 Alta, IA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (28.4%). There are also a number of people of Mexican ancestry (10.3%), and residents who report Asian roots (9.1%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (7.4%), along with some English ancestry residents (7.3%), among others. In addition, 10.9% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.

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 (59.6% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.

Here most residents (81.6%) 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 (10.7%) . 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

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