Lakeshore suburbs of Chicago dominate the top of the list of the richest cities in Illinois.
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:
The No. 1 richest city 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 reported median home value in Kenilworth is over $1.28 million, making it one of the three Illinois cities with median home values in excess of $1 million. For median property taxes paid per year, they exceed $10,000 in Kenilworth. According to Data USA, the employment breakdown makes sense for such a high-income city. The top category of occupations in Cherry Hill Villages is Management Occupations, accounting for 24.3% of the workforce. This is followed by Business & Financial Operations Occupations, at 23.1% of the workforce. In terms of the city’s top industries, they are Finance & Insurance (23.7% of the workforce), Professional, Scientific, & Technical Services (21.4% of the workforce), and Health Care & Social Assistance (11.8% of the workforce).
The No. 2 richest city in Illinois is Winnetka, another affluent northern suburb of Chicago. Like No. Kenilworth, the median household income in Winnetka exceeds $250,000. Meanwhile, the average household income in Winnetka 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 is over $1.12 million, with the median property taxes paid per year surpassing $10,000. According to Data USA, again like Kenilworth, Management Occupations (23.6% of the workforce) and Business & Financial Operations Occupations (19.3% of the workforce) dominate.
Coming in at No. 3 on our list of the richest cities in Illinois is Glencoe, a sizable suburb in Chicago’s North Shore, home to 3,195 households. The median household income in Glencoe 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 home value of over $1.1 million, Glencoe has the third highest median home value in the state. This city too pays more than $10,000 per year in property taxes.
