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