Top 10 Poorest Towns in Northern Illinois [List]

Not every town is created equal, and that's unfortunate. Some are better off than others.

We can be thankful, that most cities and town in the Northern portion of Illinois are not as bad off as many towns in central and Southern Illinois, however, some towns fare better than others.

Roadsnacks.net conducted the study to determine the statewide rankings. We took the data and filtered down the list to towns in the northern third of Illinois. Keep in mind, there were a total of 518 Illinois towns analyzed for this report.

By no means, is this judgement on people who live in these towns, but merely a reflection of the economic realities.

Three factors were used to come up with the rankings:

• Poverty Level
• Median Household Income
• Unemployment Rate

Here are Top 10 poorest cities in Northern Illinois

TOWN            State Rank      Population

1. Savanna        31                  2,993
2. Rockford       32              151,290
3. Freeport        36                 25,225
4. DeKalb          37                44,092
5. Oregon        102                 3,592
6. Rochelle       119                9,492
7. Belvidere     122                25,713
8. Princeton     148                 7,698
9. Dixon           168                14,963
10. Marengo     194                 7,451

Rockford has poverty rate of 23.3% and unemployment rate of 15.5%. Check out the complete list and rankings for the entire state HERE.

The top 3 Poorest cities in all of Illinois

1. Cairo Population 2,688
2. Ford Heights Population 2,777
3. Centreville Population 5,208