Rep. Dan Ugaste highlighted a report on Illinois' community cohesion in a Facebook post dated December 6, stating, "We can build an even brighter future for Illinois families by growing opportunities, reducing burdensome taxes, and ensuring every neighborhood is a safe place to live."
"Illinois is full of amazing individuals and communities that make our state a wonderful place to call home," said Ugaste, State Representative, according to Facebook. "We can build an even brighter future for Illinois families by growing opportunities, reducing burdensome taxes, and ensuring every neighborhood is a safe place to live."
According to Ugaste's post, he shared a link to a Yahoo News article discussing a survey that ranked Illinois among the top 15 states with tight-knit communities. The report was compiled by SmileHub, a nonprofit tech company. It shows that Illinois ranks 14th overall, with specific rankings of 134th for community well-being and togetherness, 27th for financial and social support, and 10th for stability detractors.
The SmileHub report, dated December 3, places Minnesota at the top of the list for tight-knit communities while ranking Louisiana last at 50th. The organization explained its methodology by using three key dimensions: Community Well-Being & Togetherness; Financial & Social Support; and Stability Detractors. Nearly two dozen metrics were used to evaluate these dimensions per state. Metrics were graded on 100-point scales. For metrics marked with an asterisk (*), the square root of the population was used to calculate population size to avoid overcompensating for population differences across states. After determining each state's weighted averages across all metrics for an overall score, they ranked states based on these scores.
The Community Well-Being and Togetherness metric included categories such as volunteer rates, organizational membership share of the population, state kindness ranking, share of residents living in poverty, food insecurity, and more. The Financial and Social Support metric encompassed Share of Income Donated to Charity, Civic and Social Organizations per Capita, Job Growth Rate, Adoption Rate, Google Search Interest for "Charitable Donations," among others. Stability Detractors included Separation and Divorce Rate, Violent Crime Rate, Incarceration Rate, Property Crime Rate as well as Hate Crime Incidents per Capita.
Ugaste has represented Illinois' 65th House District since 2018. He is a former attorney and shareholder at Nyhan Bambrick Kinzie & Lowry where he focused on workers' compensation defense and related litigation. Ugaste has served as President of the Lake Forest College Alumni Board and held leadership roles in various bar associations and committees. He graduated from Lake Forest High School and Lake Forest College and holds a Juris Doctorate degree from DePaul University.
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