Chicago’s Lakeshore suburbs dominate the list of richest cities in Illinois.
We recently did a roundup with our studies, analyzing various US states and identifying the richest cities. Recently, we’ve covered several Midwestern states, including wealthier cities in Ohio, Missouri, and Michigan. Now let’s turn our gaze to that classic state that Abraham Lincoln ultimately called his home state: Illinois.
We analyzed more than 1,460 cities across the state to identify the wealthiest cities in Illinois. How we evaluated and scored each city’s ranking is detailed below.
Read on to find out which is the richest city in Illinois, as well as the 50 richest cities in the state as a whole.
What are the richest cities in Illinois?
In order to compile this list of the richest cities in Illinois, we obtained key financial data from Census Bureau 2022 American Community Survey. Armed with these data sets, we built a four-factor scoring system to help identify the wealthiest cities in Illinois:
- Median household income
- Average (average) household income
- Median home value
- Median property taxes paid
When it comes to census data, keep these things in mind: For some factors, census numbers have upper bounds. For example, for median household income, the Census Bureau has an upper limit of “$250,000+.” For the median home value, the upper limit is “$2,000,000+”. For median property taxes paid, the upper limit is “$10,000 and above.” For these reasons, the average household income data set (which is the same as average household income) is crucial because the Census Bureau has accurate numbers on it. These four metrics were scored, added, and then ranked based on the cities’ combined scores.
Below is a table detailing the 50 richest cities in Illinois and their respective dollar figures for each measure:
The richest town in Illinois in our ranking is Kenilworth, a village with a total of 755 households. Kenilworth is a northern suburb of Chicago. In Kenilworth, the median household income exceeds $250,000, while its average household income of $384,288 is the second highest in Illinois. The median home value in Kenilworth exceeds $1.28 million, making it one of three cities in Illinois with a median home value above $1 million. For median property taxes paid per year, they exceed $10,000 in Kenilworth. According to United States data, the distribution of employment makes sense for a city with such high incomes. The largest occupational category in the Villages of Cherry Hill is management occupations, which make up 24.3% of the workforce. This is followed by occupations related to business and financial operations, at 23.1% of the workforce. When it comes to the city’s top industries, they are finance and insurance (23.7% of the workforce), professional, scientific and technical services (21.4% of the workforce). workforce) and health care and social assistance (11.8% of the workforce).
The second wealthiest city in Illinois is Winnetka, another affluent northern suburb of Chicago. Like No. Kenilworth, Winnetka’s median household income exceeds $250,000. Meanwhile, Winnetka’s average household income is higher than Kenilworth’s, at $417,007, making it the highest in Illinois. In terms of reported home value, the median home value in Winnetka exceeds $1.12 million, with median property taxes paid per year exceeding $10,000. According to United States dataagain like Kenilworth, management occupations (23.6% of the workforce) and business and financial operations occupations (19.3% of the workforce) dominate.
Glencoe, a major suburb on Chicago’s North Shore, comes in third on our list of the richest cities in Illinois and is home to 3,195 households. Glencoe’s median household income is $212,132, the seventh highest in the state. However, Glencoe’s average household income of $353,638 makes it the third highest in Illinois. With a reported median value of more than $1.1 million, Glencoe has the third highest median home value in the state. This city also pays over $10,000 per year in property taxes.