For Chicago's first 100 years as a city, it's population was growing at a rate that was ranked among the fastest growing in the world. In the 40 years that followed, the city's population grew from a little under 30,000 to over 1 million by the year 1890. At the close of the 19th century, Chicago was the fifth largest city in the world.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, there were 2,695, 598 people and 1,194,337 households residing within the city limits of Chicago. More than half of the population of the state of Illinois live in the Chicago metropolitan area. The population density of the city itself was 12,750.3 people per square mile, making it one of the nation's most densely populated cities. of the households in the census, 28.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 35.1% were married couples living together, 18.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 40.4% were non-families.
The median income for a household in the city was $38.625 in 2000, and the median income for a family was $46,748. Males had a median income of $35, 907 while females averaged $30,536.
As for race in 2010, Blacks (including hispanics) made up 32% of the population, Whites made up 45%, Asians 5% and 3% from two or more races. The ethnic makeup of the city is 28% Hispanic and 72% belong to non Hispanic background. In 2000, 21.7% of the population was foreign born, and 56.3% came form Latin America, 23.1% from Europe, 18.0% from Asia and 2.6% from other parts of the world. This make Chicago the fifth highest city to have a foreign-born population in the United States.
Chicago has a large Irish American population and many of them reside on the south side. Chicago was founded around the time of the Irish immigration of the 1830s, making the Irish population grow rapidly after the arrival of the refugees from the Great Famine in Ireland. By 1850, Irish immigrants accounted for about one-fifth of the city's population. They laid the foundations for many of the city's Roman Catholic churches, schools and hospitals.
Germans also have comprised a large amount of ethnic whites in the Chicago area. during the great migration to the west, many German immigrants stooped in Chicago to earn money before moving out west. From 1850 to the 20th century, people of German descent made up the largest ethnic group in the city followed by Irish, Poles, and Swedes.
Chicago also has one of the most concentrated population of Italian-Americans in the U.S. with more than 500,000 living in the metropolitan area. Chicago has the third largest population of Italians in America, behind New York and Philadelphia.
The suburbs have been expanding at a huge rate since the early 1960s. Aurora, Elgin, Joliet and the Naperville areas are known for being the four of the few "boomburbs" outside of the Sun Belt, West Coast and Mountain States regions. Settlement patterns in the Chicago metropolitan area tend to follow those in the city, the northern suburbs along the shores of Lake Michigan are comparatively affluent, while the southern suburbs (sometimes known as the Chicago Southland) are less affluent, with lower medians of income and a lower cost of living. There is a major exception to this: While the West side is the poorest section of the city, the western and the northwestern suburbs contain many affluent areas.