If you're thinking about moving to Providence, Rhode Island to open a women's online clothing store, one of the first things you'll do as part of the research process is to look up the demographics of Providence to see if its population can afford your wares. Hence your presence on this page. Demographics are also useful if you want to know whether the city is ethnically diverse, whether you can expect to meet a lot of people your own age there, and whether you'll be squashed into an apartment building like a sardine. To provide the answers to these questions and more, we've created this overview of the demographics of Providence, Rhode Island.
Population
When you're going to be selling something, population is an important factor. There's no point in peddling a web collaboration tool in Nederland, Colorado because there aren't enough people who need to collaborate. Providence, however, had a population of 173,000 at the time of the last census who were living in 62,000 households. This number has increased by several thousand since then. The current estimated population is 175,000. Because the city only covers about 18 square miles, this had led to a high population density: 9339 people per square mile.
Ethnicities and Languages
If you belong to an ethnic group and you want to make sure you'll be able to find businesses like laser hair removal salons or restaurants where the employees can speak to you in your native language, you have a fairly decent chance of finding it in Providence. Spanish-speaking Hispanic peoples from South and Central America, especially the countries of Puerto Rico, Columbia, the Dominican Republic and Guatemala, represent about 30% of the population. This is followed by Portuguese-speaking people from Portugal, Brazil and Cape Verde, who make up a further 4%. African-Americans represent about 17% of the population and Asians about 6%.
Age and Marital Status
There are about 35,800 families living in Providence, which bodes well for you if you're hoping to find some other new parents to talk about babysitters and cloth diaper covers with. The median age of the city is relatively young, only 28, largely due to the number of students and young immigrants from Hispanic countries. The largest age group is the college subset of 20-24 year-olds and about 28,300 people in the city are 55 or over.
Approximately 35% of the adult population is currently married, while 35% have never been married and 19% are either widowed, divorced, or separated.
Income Levels
While Providence isn't quite at the point where you see a pawn shop handing out cash for jewelry of questionable origins on every corner, there is a sizable chunk of the population living below the poverty line: nearly 30%, 23% of which are families. The per capita income at the time of the last census was $15,500, which is only a little more than half of the state average and $6,000 below the national average. The median income for a family was about $32,000. Only about 3.8% of households were making more than $50,000 per year.
|