Side-by-side metrics and state or size-class ranks use the same Census and FBI fields shown on this profile. Results stay in the URL so you can bookmark or share them.
Place dossier plate
SheetIL-DES-PLAINES-IL · Des Plaines, IL 59,408 pop · income 74th 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 Des Plaines
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Des Plaines on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Mayagüez zona… · lowest
17,092
Mayagüez zona… · lowest
17,092 median HH income
14.3% of the leader · rank #1
Carbondale · near
94,300
Carbondale · near
94,300 median HH income
78.9% of the leader · rank #2
Watsessing · near
94,301
Watsessing · near
94,301 median HH income
78.9% of the leader · rank #3
Avondale · near
94,302
Avondale · near
94,302 median HH income
78.9% of the leader · rank #4
Des Plaines · this city
94,303
Des Plaines · this city
94,303 median HH income
78.9% of the leader · rank #5
Bailey's Prai… · near
94,306
Bailey's Prai… · near
94,306 median HH income
78.9% of the leader · rank #6
Wheaton · highest
119,566
Wheaton · highest
119,566 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 Des Plaines 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: 59,408.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Des Plaines - the verdict
Nationally, Des Plaines sits in the 74th percentile for household income and the 54th percentile for safety among US cities with a population of 1,000 or more. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
74th
percentile, household income
68th
percentile, home value
18th
percentile, median rent
54th
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: Des Plaines, IL
59,408 people live in Des Plaines, Illinois - a small city by U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023 estimates. The typical household in Des Plaines brings in $94,303 a year, above the median for U.S. cities on this measure, with a poverty rate of 3.6%. Typical homes in Des Plaines are valued around $318,200, and the median resident age is 42.8 years. About 38.7% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, while 62.7% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
The Census Building Permit Survey recorded 3 residential units authorized here in 2024 (Construction Slowdown), down 93% from five years earlier. Des Plaines reports a comparatively low crime rate: FBI UCR figures show 1260.1 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: BEA Regional Price Parities 2024 puts Illinois at 100.0 on a 100-equals-national-average scale (Near Average). 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. Workers in Des Plaines report an average commute of 25.1 minutes, with 69.7% driving alone and 11.6% 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 Des Plaines'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 schools and households to housing and income to population change to reported crime to work and mobility to comparison shortlist; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Des Plaines, city-specific coverage includes local building permits, commute-mode shares, FBI reported-crime rates, annual population history, matched public-school count.
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. Schools and households
What does the education layer cover for Des Plaines?
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 17 public schools within the city match. 38.7% 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.
How far does income reach against housing in Des Plaines?
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 3.6%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
Is Des Plaines growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
Census PEP estimates show the population declined by -1,670 residents from 2020 to 2025, a -2.8% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 3 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.
Which cities make useful reference points for Des Plaines?
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 Orland Park (57,961 residents, $98,979 income); Oak Lawn (57,098 residents, $82,493 income); Berwyn (55,888 residents, $75,235 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Blue Springs, MO (59,416 residents); Hanford, CA (59,389 residents); Mayagüez zona urbana, PR (59,427 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 Des Plaines?
The joined FBI UCR record reports 1260.1 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, below the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 45% 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
1260.1
Violent rate
120.6
Property rate
1139.5
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
What does the journey to work look like in Des Plaines?
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 69.7%. The reported mean trip to work is 25.1 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. No single mode completely explains the work trip here. The mix is more useful than a one-number commute grade, especially when comparing places where transit, walking, and remote work divide the non-driving share differently.
Drive alone
69.7%
Work from home
11.6%
Public transit
4.4%
City-level Census ACS commuting estimates covering 30,135 workers age 16+.
Above median income · poverty 3.6% (Below-median poverty)
Cost of Living Index (state)
100.0 (US=100)
Above-average cost · BEA RPP 2024, Illinois average
B-
City profile score · Des Plaines, IL
65/100
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.
Poverty rate B
3.6%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Household income B
$94,303
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Bachelor's+ share B
38.7%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Violent crime B-
121 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger 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.
Des Plaines profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Poverty rate: 74/100 (B) · 3.6%
Household income: 73/100 (B) · $94,303
Bachelor's+ share: 73/100 (B) · 38.7%
Violent crime: 66/100 (B-) · 121 /100k
Cost of living: 40/100 (D) · 100.0 index
Where Des Plaines sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Des Plaines'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 - Des Plaines highlighted among 11 peers.Read the chart values
Des Plaines, IL (this city): home $318,200, crime 1,260/100k
Blue Springs, MO : home $241,500, crime 2,684/100k
Hanford, CA : home $323,600, crime 1,636/100k
Kokomo, IN : home $126,500, crime 1,902/100k
Santee, CA : home $653,400, crime 826/100k
Orland Park, IL : home $349,400, crime 1,126/100k
Oak Lawn, IL : home $267,900, crime 1,907/100k
Berwyn, IL : home $286,000, crime 1,252/100k
Mount Prospect, IL : home $377,000, crime 977/100k
Tinley Park, IL : home $289,000, crime 1,354/100k
Wheaton, IL : home $447,700, crime 591/100k
How does Des Plaines compare to other US cities?
Des Plaines measured against every US city with 1,000+ residents, computed live from the same Census and FBI data shown throughout this page.
Household income74% higher than other cities
Home value68% pricier than other cities
Median rent18% pricier than other cities
Safety54% 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: Des Plaines ranks #285 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 Des Plaines 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 Des Plaines near the bottom of Illinois's cities
Among the 1,336 Illinois cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Des Plaines ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Des Plaines only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#266 of 1,311
80th percentile in Illinois
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 1,336
0th percentile in Illinois
Median Home Value
#125 of 1,315
90th percentile in Illinois
Poverty Rate
#963 of 1,335
27th percentile in Illinois
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#197 of 1,336
85th 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
74th percentile nationally for median household income · 54th percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Des Plaines's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Des Plaines'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 Des Plaines's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$318,20032nd percentilemore affordable than 32% 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
Des Plaines's home-value-to-income ratio: 3.4×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
moderate
3.0–5.0×
National rank
#8,456 of 15,516
More affordable than 46% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#184 of 750
Mid-size cities (50,000–199,999)
At 3.4×, Des Plaines sits in the moderate band:
national rank #8,456 of 15,516 and #184 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
$94,303Des Plaines, IL median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Des Plaines, 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 Des Plaines, IL.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)38.7%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)3.6%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)62.7%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
59,408
Median Income
$94,303
Median Home Value
$318,200
Median Age
42.8
Poverty Rate
3.6%
Labor force participation
62.7%
Bachelor's Degree+
38.7%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
1260.1
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
120.6
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
1139.5
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
17
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Des Plaines's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
60,442 residents
2021
59,443 residents
2022
58,623 residents
2023
58,491 residents
2024
58,868 residents
2025
58,772 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
📉 Construction Slowdown
Total Permits (2024)
3
housing units authorized
Single-Family
3
detached homes
Multifamily
0
apartments & condos
Supply Intensity
0.1
permits per 1,000 residents
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
44
44
0
$11.5M
2020
40
40
0
$10.4M
2021
10
10
0
$5.7M
2022
3
3
0
$1.8M
2023
5
5
0
$3.2M
2024
3
3
0
$1.9M
Permit volume decreased 93% from 2019 to 2024.
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Average Commute Time
25.1 minutes
Drive Alone
69.7%
Carpool
10.9%
Public Transit
4.4%
Walk
1.7%
Work from Home
11.6%
Other
1.7%
Based on 30,135 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 Des Plaines. 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 Des Plaines 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 Des Plaines sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Des Plaines 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.