RoadSnacks Ranks Top 10 Poorest Cities in Illinois

Though the national economy has been picking up, and there’s evidence it could improve in Illinois too, there are some towns that are still struggling. To figure out which Illinois cities are being hit the hardest, Roadsnacks used Census data to study 518 towns with more than 2,000 people.

It looked at several factors to determine the poorest cities in Illinois:

The first thing that comes to most people’s minds when they think about determining the poorest places is simply the poverty rate. That is, the number of people living below a federally established level of income for a household of certain size.

However, we don’t think that one statistic wholly encompasses what it means to be one of the “poorest places”. So we looked at this set of criteria from the 2010-2014 American Community Survey:

• Poverty Level
• Median Household Income (Lower is poorer)
• Unemployment Rate (Higher is poorer)

Here are the Top 10 poorest cities in Illinois, according to RoadSnacks' analysis.

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