National Production. With more than 245,000,000 inhabitants the United States is the fourth country in the world in terms of population

Population

With more than 245,000,000 inhabitants the United States is the fourth country in the world in terms of population. About 75% of the population live in urban areas and there are 170 cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants, 24 of which have population of over 500,000. Most of these urban centers lie along the Atlantic and Pacific coast, the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes. The most populous area is the relatively small Northeast, which accounts for nearly one fourth of the nation’s population.

The vast majority of the population was WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) until about 1860. Between 1860 and 1920 almost 30 million immigrants arrived from central and southeastern Europe in particular. These mainly Italian, Russian, Polish and Hungarian immigrants quickly formed their own culturally homogeneous neighbourhoods (“Little Italys”, etc) and became a second economic class behind the WASPs. The almost 12% of the population that are black are bottom of the economic and educational table, with far higher unemployment than whites, especially as a result of racial discrimination. The most rapidly growing ethnic group is the Hispanics (almost 7% of Americans), who still continue to use Spanish in their homes even though the vast majority were born in the United States. Like the blacks, they have a generally lower economic and educational level than the rest of the population. There are also almost 2 million generally prosperous Oriental Americans (predominantly from Japan, China and the Philippines), who are concentrated mainly in California. The 1.5 million Native Americans live mainly in reserves in the southwestern states in usually deep poverty and there has been little or no integration into American society.

The United States is the world’s greatest economic power in term of both Gross National Product and per capita GNP, with its export accounting for more than 10% of all world trade.

Although the importance of industrial production is falling and that of services growing (as in most of Western Europe), the US remains the world’s greatest maker of industrial goods and around 20 million Americans are still employed in manufacturing. The industrial heart of the nation is the Midwest around the Great Lakes, especially in the region stretching from southern Michigan through northern Ohio and into the Pittsburgh area of Pennsylvania. Another important industrial region is the Northeast, which is the home of the major computer manufacturers. Service industries are also very important in this region and New York is the country’s banking and insurance capital. The nation’s fastest growing region, however, is the Southeast, where the chemical industry and high-technology industries are now catching up with the traditional textile industry as many firms exploit the warm climate and low labour costs.

47% of the land area of the US is farmland, of which 152 million hectares are harvested cropland and 560 million hectares are permanent pasture land, yet only 6.2 million people live on the nation’s 2,300,000 farms. The Midwest is the most important agricultural region in the United States (though California is the number one state in terms of the value of its agricultural products) and alone produces almost twice as much as the American people can consume; corn and wheat are the main crops, and livestock and dairy farming are also carried out on a large scale. Although the South is still important for traditional crops, such as tobacco, corn and cotton, there is now far greater variety, while Texas is the nation’s leading producer of cattle, sheep, cotton and rice. The West is important for cattle and wheat farming in the Great Plains area, and for fruit in the fertile valleys of the states that border the Pacific. Yet agriculture (together with fishing) accounts for less than 3% of GNP.

Дата добавления: 2015-01-03