UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AREA: 9,372,614 sq km (3,618,770 sq mi). POPULATION: 260,341,000. CAPITAL: Washington, D.C., pop. 570,000. RELIGION: Protestant, Roman Catholic. LANGUAGE: English. LITERACY: 97%. LIFE EXPECTANCY: 76 years. ECONOMY: Industry: transportation equipment, food processing, machinery, chemical products, electric equipment, fabricated metal products, printing and publishing, paper products, mining, tourism. Agriculture: cattle, dairy products, poultry and eggs, hogs, soybeans, corn, nursery stock, wheat, cotton. PCI: $24,750.


One of the world's most venerable democracies, the United States is just two centuries old as a nation. In 1776, after 169 years of British rule, the 13 Atlantic colonies declared independence. With its Constitution of 1787, the fledgling nation of four million people embarked on a bold political experiment: a federal system with a built-in balance of power among executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

Less than a century later, unresolved political issues—slavery and states' rights—were referred to the battlefields of the Civil War, which raged from 1861 to 1865. After Reconstruction, the economy boomed and railroads opened more markets. Before immigration restrictions were enacted in 1924, more than a hundred million people had arrived in the U.S.

The Depression of the 1930s closed factories and bankrupted farmers. President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal increased the federal government's social responsibility. Boom times returned after World War II, as people continued to abandon farms for cities.

Since the first census in 1790, the center of U.S. population has steadily edged westward, then south. The trend continued during the 1980s, as populations grew by 22 percent in the West and 13 percent in the South. The nation has also become more urban: Three-quarters of Americans live in metropolitan areas, where poverty and ethnic tensions are problems.

Roughly one in four U.S. citizens belonged to a minority in 1994, including 33 million African Americans, 26 million Hispanics, and 9 million Asians and Pacific Islanders, the fastest growing group.

Text source: National Geographic Atlas of the World Revised Sixth Edition, 1995