[emathias]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Now something more economics related directly. I calculated the mean household income for each community area. I wanted to do median but don't have enough to more accurately do that. I think it's more important than mean, but mean still has its place.
...
Just a comparison to various parts of NYC and some other cities, for fun:

Manhattan: $138,748
Greater Downtown Chicago: $130,375.20
San Francisco: $127,625
Downtown Chicago + some North/NW surrounding areas: $121,528.60
San Jose: $116,520
Washington DC: $110,614
Rough 800,000 piece of Chicago: $107,xxx
Seattle: $104,590
Rough 1,000,000 piece of Chicago: $98,xxx
San Diego: $93,632
Staten Island: $92,152
Atlanta: $87,784
Queens: $77,515
Brooklyn: $75,810
Bronx: $51,445
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Your "Downtown + some N/NW" areas have an ACS 2015 population of almost exactly 600,000 people. I took the liberty of doing some very rough estimates of adding in contiguous areas that would pull a "Global Chicago" with your area, anchored by the Loop with adjacent areas, into an 800,000 person population range, and then the 1,000,000 person range making them a little more comparable to San Francisco or San Jose.

One interesting thing is that San Francisco has an average age approaching 38.5, which for the areas of Chicago you've highlighted, the average is probably almost five years younger. I wonder how those numbers would change if it were possible to control for age given that I've seen numbers indicating that the average earnings for Americans in the 35-44 age group are 25% higher than in the 25-34 age group. That whole time during the 30s tends to be some strong earnings growth so even a few years could explain a significant portion of a gap between SF and Chicago. On the other hand, Manhattan's median age is probably only slightly older than my guess at the median in the area of Chicago you're looking at.