Chicago Community Area Hardship Index (2019-2023)

The Chicago Community Area Hardship Index combines values from six indicators of socioeconomic hardship to quantify and visualize the significant variations in socioeconomic status across Chicago. This story map will present hardship index values at the community area level calculated using socioeconomic data from the 2019-2023 American Community Survey (ACS).

The hardship index averages values from six variables that are standardized on a scale from 0 to 100.

The six variables that comprise the hardship index include:

• Unemployment rate
• Education (share of the population age 25 and over without a high school diploma)
• Per capita income
• Poverty rate (households with income below the poverty federal level)
• Crowded housing (share of housing units with more than one person per room)
• Dependency (share of population under 18 or over 64 years of age)

The Great Cities Institute (GCI) has applied and published this index to Chicago's community areas since 2016. The hardship index calculation is based on the “Intercity Hardship Index” by Richard P. Nathan and Charles F. Adams, Jr. in “Understanding Urban Hardship,” Political Science Quarterly 91 (Spring 1976): 47-62. Matt E. Sweeney and Matthew D. Wilson first applied this index to Chicago's community areas in 2016 using 2010-2014 ACS data.

In this Chicago hardship index update, 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates were used to calculate index values by census tracts and were aggregated to community areas. The 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates represent the most recent data available to calculate the index at the community area level.

The hardship index values exhibit a strong spatial clustering pattern across Chicago, with the highest levels of socioeconomic hardship generally concentrated in the South and West Sides.

• A cluster of community areas with high economic hardship (roughly ≥ 60) is located on the West and South Sides. These include:
  • Riverdale (83.1)
  • Fuller Park (74.1)
  • West Garfield Park (69.3)
  • Gage Park (65.9)
  • New City (63.6)
  • South Lawndale (62.8)
  • Archer Heights (61.0)
  • West Englewood (61.2)
  • Armour Square (60.5)
  • Englewood (60.4)

• A cluster of community areas with the lowest economic hardship (under 15) lies mostly near Lake Michigan, including:
  • Near North Side (8.9)
  • Lincoln Park (9.2)
  • Lake View (11.6)
  • West Town (12.6)
  • Loop (14.3)
  • Near North Side (14.8)

• A second tier of community areas with low hardship scores are situated on the North Side, not on the lakefront. Examples include:
  • North Center (15.4)
  • Logan Square (19.5)
  • Edison Park (20.8)
  • Near West Side (20.4)
  • Forest Glen (22.5)
  • Lincoln Square (23.4)

• On the South Side, only a few areas land in this range, notably:
  • Beverly (25.8)
  • Hyde Park (26.7)

• The median economic hardship value for all community areas is 43.9, the value for the Lower West Side.

The table below contains the unstandardized variables used to calculate the hardship index.

Data was collected from the tidycensus package in R. We aggregate census tract level ACS data to community areas based on if a census tracts centroid was located within a community area.