Education in States and Nations: 1991
(ESN) Indicator 1: Population and area
A country's or state's population and area influence both the
organizational
structure and the infrastructure of its education system.
Countries or states
with large populations tend to have large numbers of school-age
children and
face a greater demand for educational services. Countries or
states with
large areas face greater challenges in providing educational
services since
they must spread them over a wider geographical domain. High
population
densities may make it more efficient to support a wider range of
specialized
education and training opportunities. Each of these factors may
influence the
degree to which an education system is centralized and its
ability to provide
a wide range of services, but may only become critical in cases
where
population, area, or density is either extremely large or
extremely small.
Otherwise, factors such as culture, history, and economics may
have a stronger
influence in determining the structure of an education system.
In this
indicator, the sizes of the U.S. and its fifty states are
compared to those of
most of the current and prospective members of the Organization
for Economic
Cooperation and Development.
- Three OECD countries - the United States, Canada, and
Australia - have
extremely large areas. Of the remaining countries, none has an
area as great
as one tenth the area of the United States.
- The United States was by far the most populous OECD country
in 1991,
with
a population over twice as large as that of the country with the
next largest
population, Japan.
- While no state has an area near the size of one of the
three largest
OECD countries, Alaska, Texas, and California each have
areas greater
than at least 18 of the 23 other nations included here.
- California was the most populous state in 1991, with 12
million more
persons than New York. Other states with populations
greater than 10
million included New York, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania,
Illinois, and
Ohio. Seven states had populations of less than 1 million.
- The range of population densities across the states
paralleled the
range across the OECD countries. At the low end, Alaska,
Wyoming,
Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Australia, and Canada
all had
population densities lower than 10 persons per square mile.
At the
high end, New Jersey, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Japan
all had
population densities higher than 800 persons per square
mile.
Introduction and Overview 
Figure 1a
