Illinois ranks high among the states in the manufacture of food products, chemicals, fabricated metals, computer and electronic products, and rubber products, as well as in the number of printing and publishing establishments. It is also among the top producers of nonelectrical machinery, which accounts for the largest share of its foreign exports. Industrial parks are scattered throughout the state, the greatest concentration being in the Chicago metropolitan area.

Beginning in the second half of the 20th century, Illinois, like many other states across the country, experienced an ongoing decline in manufacturing. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost as companies moved overseas and to states where business costs were lower. However, manufacturing still remains a significant sector of the state’s economy.

Finance

For decades Illinois had a high number of independent banks, the result of a long-standing state prohibition against branch banking that had been established by the constitution of 1870. The issue produced complex political battles in Springfield, with frequent charges and occasional exposures of political graft connected with it, even after the late 1960s, when legislation began to loosen the prohibition. Finally, state and federal laws passed in the mid-1990s removed restrictions against branching both within the state and across state lines, and by the early 21st century branch banks had proliferated in Illinois.

Illinois is a major insurance centre. Chicago is the seat of the seventh district of the Federal Reserve System and is home to the Chicago Stock Exchange, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, and the Chicago Board of Trade, the latter of which merged in 2007 with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a pioneer in the futures market. The Board of Trade is the country’s oldest commodity market, dealing in contracts for a wide variety of products, including corn, grains, soybeans and their products, and precious metals.

Transportation

Illinois is a national transportation hub. Few comparable areas are served by so many means of transportation. The state’s freight and passenger rail networks, radiating from Chicago, are among the most extensive in the country. Chicago is a major centre for Amtrak service and of a large commuter rail system. Chicago is also one of the principal hubs of the national road system, and each of the state’s major urban areas is served by at least one interstate highway.

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Water transportation became more efficient when Lake Michigan was connected to the Mississippi River in 1848 by means of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, linking the Chicago and Illinois rivers. Completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 stimulated the expansion of the Port of Chicago. Oceangoing freighters dock at Calumet Harbor in South Chicago.

Chicago has two major airports, O’Hare International—one of the busiest in the country—and Midway; a third airport, Meigs Field, which served small planes on the Chicago lakefront, was closed down in 2003 by Mayor Richard M. Daley. Regional airports are located at Champaign-Urbana, Bloomington-Normal, Springfield, and other cities. In all, about 700 airports are located throughout the state.

Constitutional framework

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The first state constitution was adopted in 1818, the second in 1848, and the third in 1870, which remained in effect for 100 years. The current constitution, adopted in December 1970, added new concepts to the Illinois Bill of Rights, forbidding discrimination on the basis of race, creed, colour, national ancestry, or sex in employment or in housing and prohibiting discrimination against the physically or mentally handicapped.

The executive branch consists of the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, treasurer, and comptroller, all elected to unlimited four-year terms. The governor has the power to reorganize state government and also has a line-item veto.

Illinois’s General Assembly comprises a 59-member Senate and a 118-member House of Representatives. Senators serve two four-year terms and one two-year term each decade; the relative timing of these terms varies by legislative district. Representatives serve two-year terms and are elected from single-member districts.

The judiciary is headed by the seven-member Supreme Court, whose justices are elected to 10-year terms in partisan contests (i.e., they stand for election as members of a political party). Beneath the Supreme Court are appellate and circuit courts, the members of which are also elected (to 10-year and 6-year terms, respectively). There is also the Court of Claims, which hears claims involving the state. Judges run for retention on their records, needing to secure three-fifths support of voters in a nonpartisan election to remain in office.

Illinois has three levels of local government—county, township, and municipal—plus many special districts. For example, Illinois is one of the few states across the country that have mosquito abatement districts. Counties are classed as township and non-township, with Cook county, containing Chicago and most of its major suburbs, in a class by itself. The 85 township counties are governed by boards of commissioners elected from districts or at large; the 17 non-township counties have 3-member boards elected at large, and Cook county has a 17-member board, with 11 members from Chicago and 6 from the suburbs.

Townships act primarily as road-maintenance and general-assistance units. The annual town meeting, a gathering of all qualified voters—though attendance is usually low—is a feature of local government that remains from earlier centuries. Municipal government usually is of the mayor-council type, though other forms are permitted; many villages utilize a president-trustee system.

Overall, Illinois has more than 8,000 units of local government, resulting in overlapping administrative, educational, park, fire, sanitary, sewage, drainage, and other special districts. Most were formed to circumvent restrictions in the old constitution but have become self-perpetuating. Patterns of taxation are similarly mixed. State taxes include those on personal and business income, cigarettes, liquor, and retail sales. Real-estate taxes contribute the major local support for schools and other services, though the state supplies “no-strings-attached” grants to municipalities and counties from income-tax revenues.

Health and welfare

Health and welfare assistance and services are provided by both state and local governments, most of which receive funds from diverse federal agencies. Representatives of the low-income groups most requiring the services have been in frequent conflict with local officials over the question of who is to administer the funds and the programs.

The Illinois Housing Development Authority finances the creation of affordable housing for the state’s residents, and the many municipal and county agencies administer federal public-housing programs. Chicago’s public housing is primarily a municipal responsibility, with federal aid.

Statewide, welfare assistance to poor families, dependent children, and other groups has met resistance in the legislature in Springfield. Independent attempts to establish free neighbourhood medical clinics in low-income African American and Spanish-speaking areas of cities often have encountered local hostility and inadequate funding.

Medical facilities throughout most of Illinois are among the finest in the country, and medical research plays an increasingly important role in the state’s economy. Chicago is a centre for medical and psychiatric services and training, but economically depressed areas continue to be underserved.

Although per capita income in Illinois is among the highest in the country, problems of poverty continue to plague the state. Some progress was made in reducing the welfare rolls through a jobs incentive initiative during Gov. Jim Edgar’s administration (1991–99).

Education

The Illinois State Board of Education was created in 1975 after the 1970 constitution directed that responsibility for public elementary and secondary education be transferred from an elected superintendent to an appointed board of citizens. The board’s nine members are appointed by the governor with the consent of the Senate and serve no more than two consecutive four-year terms. The issue of funding Chicago city schools was formerly a bitter point of contention between the city and the state, though the conflict diminished somewhat with some improvements in Chicago city schools beginning in the late 20th century.

In the field of higher education, Illinois offers a wide array of opportunity, and its academic excellence is often noted. Sectarian and nonaffiliated private institutions are scattered throughout the state. The University of Chicago (chartered 1890) is respected as one of the finest institutions of higher learning in the country. Northwestern University (1851), in Evanston, is also nationally renowned and has a distinguished faculty in several areas, as does the Illinois Institute of Technology (formed by the merger of two earlier institutions in 1940), in Chicago. The state system of higher education includes eight colleges and universities anchored by the University of Illinois (1867), with campuses at Champaign-Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield; one of the Big Ten schools, it is also a major research institution. Among the other state schools are Southern Illinois University (SIU; 1869), with campuses in Carbondale and Edwardsville, and Illinois State University (1857) in Normal. There are also more than 60 community colleges and technical schools in Illinois.