Chicagoans Are Happy Despite Concerns About Health Care, Jobs, Immigration, and Safety
ChicagoSpeaks is the only probability-based panel built exclusively for Chicago, giving decision-makers reliable evidence on residents’ opinions and priorities.
July 2024
Most Chicago residents consider themselves happier than their peers, happier than they were three years ago, and the type of person who enjoys life regardless of what is going on, according to a ChicagoSpeaks® poll from NORC at the University of Chicago.
Black Chicagoans are particularly likely to describe themselves as happy, rating themselves (5.70) as happier people than both Hispanic (5.30) and white (5.17) Chicagoans.
However, Chicagoans aren’t particularly positive about the city’s health care system, job market, immigration rates, or safety. One area where residents express concern is health care.
Many Chicagoans lack confidence in the city’s health care system and say there is unequal access to health care due to income, age, sex, and citizenship status. Forty-five percent of both Chicagoans and the U.S. public in general say people should have access to publicly funded health care even if they’re not a U.S. citizen. Roughly half (52 percent) of all Chicago Democrats support publicly funded health care for non-U.S. citizens, more than double that of Republicans (24 percent).
Twenty-two percent of Chicago residents have a great deal or complete confidence in the city’s health care system and see the same health care access inequality issues as the nation.
Economic concerns also emerge in the data. Chicagoans are more likely than all U.S. adults to think they will be laid off (22 percent vs. 9 percent), to expect more difficulty in finding employment (42 percent vs. 32 percent), and to have lower job satisfaction (75 percent vs. 87 percent).
“Chicagoans are more than twice as pessimistic about their job security than U.S. adults.”
Views on immigration show a similar mix of concern and uncertainty. About 1 in 5 Chicagoans and the U.S. public in general think immigrants take jobs away from people who were born in the United States.
Chicagoans are less supportive of increasing immigration to the United States than the U.S. public as a whole, based on 2022 General Social Survey (GSS) national data. About half of Chicago residents want immigration reduced compared to about a third of the U.S. public. Only 1 in 5 Chicago residents wants to see immigration to the U.S. increased, and 27 percent of Chicagoans want the numbers of immigrants to stay the same. However, Chicago residents (32 percent) are more likely than the general U.S. public (19 percent) to think immigrants increase crime rates.
Concerns about public safety are also evident in the findings. More Chicagoans feel unsafe within one mile of their home than people do nationwide. Two-thirds of Chicagoans feel unsafe walking at night in some area near their home, compared to 38 percent in national 2022 GSS data. This does not differ significantly depending on Chicagoans’ income, race or ethnicity, sex, or partisanship.
However, these fears do not translate to increased gun ownership. Even though guns are often purchased to increase feelings of safety—94 percent of Chicagoans who own guns do so for protection—fewer Chicagoans own guns than the national average. Just 14 percent of Chicagoans report a gun in their home compared to 35 percent nationally.
Methodology
The Chicago poll was conducted June 24–July 10, 2024 using ChicagoSpeaks®, NORC at the University of Chicago’s probability-based panel of Chicago residents. Overall, 1,254 Chicago residents completed the survey, including 855 probability cases and 399 non-probability cases. The overall margin of sampling error is +/- 4.4 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level, including the design effect. The margin of sampling error may be higher for subgroups.
NORC conducted the survey using three sample sources: (1) AmeriSpeak® panelists residing in Chicago (2) pre-screened respondents from a previous NORC survey of Chicagoans who agreed to be recontacted, and (3) Chicago residents from Dynata’s web panel. AmeriSpeak and the previous NORC survey respondents originated from probability-based samples, while Dynata is a non-probability panel. Final survey estimates were calibrated to account for the three sample sources. This research supports a scientifically rigorous, community-driven resource that informs policymakers and the public about the experiences and opinions of Chicago residents.
Interviews were conducted online in English and Spanish with Chicago residents ages 18 and older. AmeriSpeak panelists were invited through the password-protected AmeriSpeak Mobile App and received email reminders. Address-based sample recruits received a combination of email and mail communications, while Dynata used their typical panel recruitment methods. Respondents were offered a small monetary incentive for completing the survey.
Quality assurance checks were conducted to ensure data quality. In total, 21 interviews were removed for nonresponse to at least 50 percent of the questions asked of them or for completing the survey in less than one-third the median interview time for the full sample. These interviews were excluded from the data file prior to weighting.
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About ChicagoSpeaks
Funded and operated by NORC at the University of Chicago, ChicagoSpeaks® is a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the Chicago household population.
For more information, email ChicagoSpeaks-BD@norc.org.
About NORC at the University of Chicago
NORC at the University of Chicago conducts research and analysis that decision-makers trust. As a nonpartisan research organization and a pioneer in measuring and understanding the world, we have studied almost every aspect of the human experience and every major news event for more than eight decades. Today, we partner with government, corporate, and nonprofit clients around the world to provide the objectivity and expertise necessary to inform the critical decisions facing society.
Contact: For more information, please email press@norc.org or call (877) 832-0392.
