Lakeshore suburbs of Chicago dominate the top of the list of the richest cities in Illinois. | GETTY
By Andrew DePietro Contributor | Forbes
We’ve been on a tour d’horizon lately with our studies, analyzing various American states and identifying the richest cities there. Recently, we have covered several states of the Midwest, including the richest cities in Ohio, Missouri, and Michigan. Now, we turn our eye on that classic state that Abraham Lincoln eventually called his home state: Illinois.
We analyzed over 1,460 cities in the state in order to identify the richest cities in Illinois. The way in which we evaluated and scored each city’s ranking is detailed below.
Read on to find out what the richest city in Illinois is, plus the top 50 wealthiest cities in the state overall.
What Are the Richest Cities in Illinois?
In order to assemble this list of the richest cities in Illinois, we sourced key financial data from the Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey. Armed with these datasets, we constructed a four-factor scoring system to help identify the wealthiest cities in Illinois:
- Median household income
- Mean (average) household income
- Median home value
- Median property taxes paid
When it comes to Census data, keep these things in mind: For certain factors, the Census numbers have upper limits. For example, for median household income, the Census Bureau has an upper limit of “$250,000+”. For median home value, the upper limit is “$2,000,000+”. For median property taxes paid, the upper limit is “$10,000+”. For these reasons, the mean household income (which is the same as average household income) dataset is crucial because the Census Bureau has exact figures for it. All four of these metrics were scored, added up, and then ranked by the cities’ combined scores.
Below you’ll find a table detailing the top 50 richest cities in Illinois and their respective dollar figures for each metric:
Read more here. Spoiler alert:
