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Place dossier plate
SheetIL-ARLINGTON-HEIGHTS-IL · Arlington Heights, IL 76,220 pop · income 87th pct
Instrument codes from this place’s ACS population and household income, BEA state COL, FBI safety, national income percentile, photo-finish peer city, home-value band, and matched Census-tract book - not a moving recommendation.
Income neighbourhood around Arlington Heights
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Arlington Heights on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Scranton · lowest
49,531
Scranton · lowest
49,531 median HH income
41.6% of the leader · rank #1
Wethersfield · near
118,523
Wethersfield · near
118,523 median HH income
99.6% of the leader · rank #2
Arlington Hei… · near
118,529
Arlington Hei… · near
118,529 median HH income
99.6% of the leader · rank #3
Arlington Hei… · this city
118,532
Arlington Hei… · this city
118,532 median HH income
99.6% of the leader · rank #4
Palo Cedro · near
118,542
Palo Cedro · near
118,542 median HH income
99.6% of the leader · rank #5
Farmington · near
118,556
Farmington · near
118,556 median HH income
99.6% of the leader · rank #6
Rochester Hil… · highest
119,054
Rochester Hil… · highest
119,054 median HH income
100.0% of the leader · rank #7
What this shows Neighbourhood peers only - not a full nationwide city board. Open a near peer when the gap is small; open the poles when the spread is wide.
Compare beyond this state
Nationwide peers by population, income, and FBI crime rate
Out-of-state nearest neighbors for Arlington Heights on ACS population and median household income
, plus FBI UCR reporting rate when the extract covers this place. Link sets are deduped so each column is a distinct comparison path, not a forecast that peers share a labor market or climate.
Similar population
Nearest out-of-state cities by ACS population. This city: 76,220.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Arlington Heights - the verdict
Measured against every US city with at least 1,000 residents, Arlington Heights lands in the 87th percentile for household income and the 67th percentile for safety. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
87th
percentile, household income
78th
percentile, home value
18th
percentile, median rent
67th
percentile, safety
📝 How we sourced this
Population, income, and housing-cost figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates (B-series tables). Crime data uses FBI UCR; climate uses NOAA Climate Normals; school counts come from NCES Common Core of Data; permits use the Census Building Permits Survey (BPS). See our methodology page for the full ETL pipeline and OMB / FIPS join keys.
Data Snapshot: Arlington Heights, IL
Illinois's Arlington Heights is a small city, with 76,220 residents per the latest Census Bureau ACS figures. Median household income here is $118,532 per year, placing it in the top quartile of U.S. cities for household income, with a poverty rate of 5.2%. Typical homes in Arlington Heights are valued around $403,200, and the median resident age is 42.7 years. About 60.2% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, while 65.3% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
Housing supply pressure shows in Census Building Permit Survey data: 321 residential units were authorized in 2024 (Building Boom), up 435% from five years earlier. Arlington Heights reports a comparatively low crime rate: FBI UCR figures show 930.0 crimes per 100,000 residents, below the national average (reporting is voluntary across agencies, so treat this as reporting activity rather than a definitive danger score).
Illinois tracks close to the national cost-of-living baseline: the state registers 100.0 on a 100-equals-national-average index (Near Average) per BEA Regional Price Parities 2024. Statewide, HUD pegs Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom unit at $1,063 monthly. Statewide, average monthly utility bills in Illinois run around $240, per EIA 2023 residential energy data. The average commute for Arlington Heights workers runs 21.8 minutes, with 64.2% driving alone and 22.5% working from home. FEMA's National Risk Index rates natural-hazard exposure at 54.5 out of 100 (Low).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Arlington Heights's data
How this reading path is ordered
This is not a composite city score. It is a city-specific route through the available public records, ordered for this profile so the page starts with questions the joined data can actually answer. The route here runs from housing and income to population change to schools and households to comparison shortlist to reported crime to work and mobility; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Arlington Heights, city-specific coverage includes annual population history, matched public-school count, FBI reported-crime rates, local building permits, commute-mode shares.
No matched row is reported here for within-city Census tract profiles; the page leaves those layers out instead of substituting a statewide or national value.
1. Housing and income
How far does income reach against housing in Arlington Heights?
This is a citywide price-to-income reference, not a mortgage-affordability test; it does not include interest rates, taxes, insurance, household size, or an individual buyer's down payment. Income and home value move within the same broad scale here. The useful next check is not a generic affordability label, but whether similar-size cities offer a materially different income, housing, or commute trade-off.
The home-value-to-income reference sits in a middle range: the ACS median home value is 3.4 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 5.2%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
Is Arlington Heights growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
Census PEP estimates show the population declined by -1,197 residents from 2020 to 2025, a -1.5% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 321 housing units authorized in 2024. PEP and ACS are different Census series, so the trend is kept separate from the headline ACS population.
Recent estimates point downward. A falling count can reflect migration, household size, annexation boundaries, or estimation noise, so it is a prompt to inspect the full series rather than a claim about local economic health.
What does the education layer cover for Arlington Heights?
The city has a broader matched school footprint, but count alone does not describe performance, capacity, program availability, or attendance boundaries. This profile deliberately avoids converting it into an unsupported family-friendliness score.
The NCES join finds 13 public schools within the city match. 60.2% of adults age 25+ hold a bachelor's degree or higher in the ACS estimate. These measures answer different questions: the school count describes local institutions, while adult attainment describes residents and cannot be used as a school-quality rating.
Which cities make useful reference points for Arlington Heights?
Use the in-state set to hold state policy and broad price conditions more nearly constant. Use the nationwide size set to ask whether cities with a similar resident count produce different housing, income, or commute outcomes. The income set is a third lens, deliberately separate from population matching. The nationwide peer panel below adds a fourth FBI UCR reporting-rate lens, not personal risk.
Within Illinois, the closest population matches are Evanston (76,552 residents, $95,766 income); Schaumburg (76,780 residents, $94,690 income); Bolingbrook (73,813 residents, $107,552 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Cheektowaga, NY (76,251 residents); Flagstaff, AZ (76,333 residents); Rochester Hills, MI (76,086 residents). A third, income-matched reference set of 6 out-of-state cities sits in the income neighbourhood chart near the Place Dossier plate. These are mechanical peer sets, not claims that the places share a labor market, climate, culture, or metro context.
These joined records add useful context, but they do not need another full-size panel. Each remains a separate measure with its own geography and source boundary.
Reported crime
What can the FBI record say about safety in Arlington Heights?
The joined FBI UCR record reports 930.0 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, below the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 59% lower in arithmetic terms, but agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies.
Treat this as a reporting-rate comparison, not a prediction of personal risk or a neighborhood-level safety grade. Tourism, daytime population, reporting practices, and variation inside the city are not adjusted away. The state rank and same-state peer table are the narrower comparisons available on this page.
Total reported rate
930.0
Violent rate
50.3
Property rate
879.7
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
What does the journey to work look like in Arlington Heights?
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 64.2%. The reported mean trip to work is 21.8 minutes.
Mode share answers how workers usually travel; it does not measure congestion, reliability, distance to a particular job, or the quality of transit service. Remote work has a visible role in the local pattern. That can reduce commute exposure for some workers, but it says nothing about job availability or broadband quality; read it alongside income and housing rather than as a stand-alone lifestyle score.
Drive alone
64.2%
Work from home
22.5%
Public transit
4.8%
City-level Census ACS commuting estimates covering 38,732 workers age 16+.
Above-average cost · BEA RPP 2024, Illinois average
B
City profile score · Arlington Heights, IL
73/100
5 published dimensions · ACS/FBI 2023
Comparative score against U.S. cities with population of 1,000 or more on Census ACS medians
(income, poverty, bachelor's share, cost of living) and FBI UCR violent-crime rates when
published. Higher means a stronger standing on those published figures, not a livability
rating, not a recommendation to move, buy, or pick a "best" city. Missing inputs drop out
and redistribute weight.
How it is calculated.
Bachelor's+ share A+
60.2%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Household income A
$118,532
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Violent crime A-
50 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Poverty rate C+
5.2%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Cost of living D
100.0 index
BEA state Regional Price Parities index (100 ≈ national average); lower is stronger on this axis. Same value for every city in the state.
Arlington Heights profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Bachelor's+ share: 92/100 (A+) · 60.2%
Household income: 85/100 (A) · $118,532
Violent crime: 84/100 (A-) · 50 /100k
Poverty rate: 64/100 (C+) · 5.2%
Cost of living: 40/100 (D) · 100.0 index
Where Arlington Heights sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Arlington Heights's median home value and FBI crime rate plotted with similar-size and
same-state peers (padded with large cities when the peer set is thin). The second
read: pricey does not always mean safer, check which quadrant this city lands in.
Census ACS median home value vs FBI UCR crime rate - Arlington Heights highlighted among 10 peers.Read the chart values
Arlington Heights, IL (this city): home $403,200, crime 930/100k
Flagstaff, AZ : home $503,400, crime 2,695/100k
Rochester Hills, MI : home $377,400, crime 624/100k
Scranton, PA : home $141,700, crime 1,627/100k
Southfield, MI : home $226,900, crime 2,913/100k
Evanston, IL : home $472,300, crime 2,884/100k
Schaumburg, IL : home $312,200, crime 2,489/100k
Bolingbrook, IL : home $295,500, crime 961/100k
Decatur, IL : home $97,300, crime 3,470/100k
Cicero, IL : home $236,000, crime 1,581/100k
How does Arlington Heights compare to other US cities?
Where Arlington Heights sits among all US cities (population 1,000+) on each measure, computed live from Census and FBI data.
Household income87% higher than other cities
Home value78% pricier than other cities
Median rent18% pricier than other cities
Safety67% safer than other cities
"Safer than" reflects total crime rate from FBI UCR; the others use Census ACS estimates.
Zoom in to just Illinois and the picture shifts: Arlington Heights ranks #226 of 455 Illinois cities by lowest crime rate, a different read than the national percentile above.
How we calculate these percentiles & ranks
Each percentile compares Arlington Heights against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Illinois only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Illinois-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Arlington Heights near the bottom of Illinois's cities
Among the 1,336 Illinois cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Arlington Heights ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Arlington Heights only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#118 of 1,311
91st percentile in Illinois
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 1,336
0th percentile in Illinois
Median Home Value
#66 of 1,315
95th percentile in Illinois
Poverty Rate
#823 of 1,335
38th percentile in Illinois
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#63 of 1,336
95th percentile in Illinois
How in-state ranks are ordered
Ranked by raw value (highest first); a higher rank is not automatically "better" for every measure, see each metric's own context above. This is a comparison within Illinois only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
87th percentile nationally for median household income · 67th percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Arlington Heights's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Arlington Heights's percentile rank on 3 favorable-direction measures (income, affordability, safety) vs. every tracked US city -- higher on every axis is more favorable. Not a composite quality score, just the arithmetic mean of the axes shown.
How Arlington Heights's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$403,20022nd percentilemore affordable than 22% of 15,600 US cities
Show national distribution
Each bar is a $25K-wide band; taller bars hold more US cities. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count, share, and where it sits relative to this entry.
Source U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year Estimates · 2023
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
moderate
3.0–5.0×
National rank
#8,581 of 15,516
More affordable than 45% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#192 of 750
Mid-size cities (50,000–199,999)
At 3.4×, Arlington Heights sits in the moderate band:
national rank #8,581 of 15,516 and #192 of 750mid-size cities (50,000–199,999).
Income and home value move in the same broad scale; check same-state peers before treating the multiple as an advantage or a warning.
How this ratio is calculated
Ratio = Census ACS 2023 median home value ÷ median household income for cities with both fields and population ≥ 1,000.
Rank 1 = lowest ratio (most compact). Bands match the fleet affordability thresholds used on guides (<3.0 / 3.0–5.0 / >5.0).
This is not a mortgage payment estimate and does not include rates, taxes, insurance, or down payment.
Income distribution context
$118,532Arlington Heights, IL median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Arlington Heights, IL median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Arlington Heights, IL.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)60.2%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)5.2%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)65.3%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
76,220
Median Income
$118,532
Median Home Value
$403,200
Median Age
42.7
Poverty Rate
5.2%
Labor force participation
65.3%
Bachelor's Degree+
60.2%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
930.0
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
50.3
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
879.7
per 100,000 residents
Crime reporting caveat
Reflects incidents reported to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program — agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies by jurisdiction and year, so this reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score. Not adjusted for tourism, commuter, or daytime population.
Schools
Total Schools
13
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Arlington Heights's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
77,413 residents
2021
76,092 residents
2022
75,231 residents
2023
75,099 residents
2024
75,640 residents
2025
76,216 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
📈 Building Boom
Total Permits (2024)
321
housing units authorized
Single-Family
20
detached homes
Multifamily
301
apartments & condos
Supply Intensity
4.2
permits per 1,000 residents
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
60
37
23
$17.8M
2020
42
42
0
$19.4M
2021
105
29
76
$26.4M
2022
23
23
0
$15.7M
2023
30
30
0
$19.5M
2024
321
20
301
$103.1M
Permit volume increased 435% from 2019 to 2024.
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Average Commute Time
21.8 minutes
Drive Alone
64.2%
Carpool
6.0%
Public Transit
4.8%
Walk
1.3%
Work from Home
22.5%
Other
1.2%
Based on 38,732 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Illinois statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $240
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Illinois at $240 (electricity about $100 , water and sewer about $50 ).
These are Illinois statewide averages, not a meter reading for Arlington Heights. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Illinois's BEA cost-of-living index is 100.0 (Near Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Arlington Heights is $1,063/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Illinois statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 54.5 / 100 (Low).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Illinois statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Arlington Heights sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Arlington Heights compares to similar-size Illinois cities
Same-state peer method
Closest same-state population matches, not geographic neighbors. Population + median household income come from Census Bureau ACS 5-year B01001 and B19013.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year 2023, FBI UCR, NCES CCD, Census BPS 2024, Census ACS B08301/B08136, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023, BEA Regional Price Parities 2024, HUD Fair Market Rents 2026, FEMA National Risk Index.