Comparing the US to other countries is everyone’s favorite pastime.
And I get it.
The country has problems.
Gun violence.
Income inequality.
A racist history.
A tendency to pollute.
Obesity.
Discombobulated health care.
A potentially antagonistic foreign policy.
And the list goes on.
Yet despite the drawbacks, people want to be here.
My parents came in the 1970s and never left.
Of my six first cousins not born here, four now call themselves American.
As of 2020, over 40 million people living in the US were born in another country, accounting for around one-fifth of the world’s migrants. Among that group, nearly every country was represented.
Over one million immigrants continue to arrive in the US each year.
Perhaps it’s the economic opportunity. Perhaps it’s simply about escaping oppression.
Whatever the reason, the numbers speak for themselves.
Now, none of this is meant to be a form of denial.
Both immigrants and non-immigrants (a group that includes me) know the country has work to do.
The issue is that critique of the States often centers around comparisons to the following nations, indicated here with their population and relative size:
- Germany: 83 million, or 25% of the US
- United Kingdom: 67 million (20%)
- France: 65 million (19.6%)
- Canada: 38 million (less than California and 11.5%)
- Australia: 26 million (7.8%)
- Sweden: 10 million (3%)
- Denmark: 5.8 million (1.8%)
- Finland: 5.5 million (1.7%)
- Iceland: 0.34 million (less than half of the county in Upstate New York I call home and 0.1%)
As the numbers indicate, the so-called cream of the crop are quite a bit smaller and, in the case of the smallest, far more homogeneous.
For reference, with 331 million residents, the US is one of the ten most-populated countries in the world. Also included on that list are:
- China: 1.4 billion
- India: 1.4 billion
- Indonesia: 273 million
- Pakistan: 220 million
- Brazil: 212 million
- Nigeria: 206 million
- Bangladesh: 164 million
- Russia: 145 million
- Mexico: 128 million
Again, the goal here is not denial.
Just perspective.
In other words, the next time we’re comparing the US to Denmark, Finland, and Iceland, we should include data on India, Brazil, and Bangladesh.
2 Responses
apples and oranges
size and population ratios, ancestry, geogrphy etc, do these matter?
U.S.A is the greatest country in the world and wants to be one for a long long long time and may be a little bit of self critique is not unwarrented.
Very true. Self-critique is key to moving forward. But the conclusions drawn when comparing apples to oranges should be kept in perspective.