Per capita income. The Near North Side and certain suburban areas have the highest level of per capita income in the Chicago area. Persons under 18. Children and teenagers generally make up the largest proportion of the population in the lower-income neighborhoods. There are relatively few persons under 18 in the well-off neighborhoods on the North Side or in most inner suburbs.
Population density is, as in most cities, inversely correlated with distance from the center.
But the largely industrial corridors along the two branches of the Chicago River have few residents, while the generally prosperous neighborhoods on the North Side Lakefront tend to have more persons per square kilometer than one might expect on the basis of their distance from the Loop, while some of the problem-ridden neighborhoods of the South and West Sides have fewer. Public transit use. High use of public transit is closely related to housing density. There is hardly any correlation between income and public transit use in Chicago. Detached single-family housing in Chicago is found largely at the edge of the city and in the suburbs, but there are few large areas where it makes up the only housing type.