essay about north america

North America: Human Geography

North America’s human landscape closely mirrors that of its physical environment: varied, rich, and constantly changing.

Geography, Human Geography, Social Studies, Economics, World History

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North America, the third-largest continent , extends from the tiny Aleutian Islands in the northwest to the Isthmus of Panama in the south. North America’s physical geography , environment and resources , and human geography can be considered separately. North America and South America are named after Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci. Vespucci was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not part of the East Indies , but an entirely separate landmass. The portions of the landmass that widened out north of the Isthmus of Panama became known as North America. Today, North America is home to the citizens of Canada, the United States, Greenland, Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and the island countries and territories of the Caribbean Sea and western North Atlantic. North America’s human landscape closely mirrors that of its physical environment: varied, rich, and constantly changing. From their beginnings to the present day, the peoples of North America have worked with and against their surroundings in order to survive and prosper . Historic Cultures Indigenous cultures shaped, and were shaped by, the geography of North America. The first North Americans are believed to have migrated from Siberia, in northeast Asia, by crossing a land bridge over the Bering Strait. These populations fanned out southward, to the present-day U.S. states of Florida and California, as well as Mexico and Central America. The Olmec and the Maya, indigenous to Central America, built the first cities on the continent, eventually leading to the great urban areas of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. These cities, in what is now central Mexico, boasted sophisticated engineering structures, such as canals , apartment buildings, and irrigation systems. Many of these early North American cultures were scientifically and agriculturally advanced. Mayan calendars and almanacs recorded celestial events such as eclipses and seasonal changes. The Mayans were also mathematically advanced. Their counting system was able to represent very large numbers using only three symbols: dots, lines, and a football-shaped symbol that indicated a zero. The Mayans were, in fact, the first culture to have a written symbol for zero. Cultures throughout southern North America harvested corn, squash, and beans in regular cycles. This sort of agriculture allowed major civilizations to develop. People were no longer bound to produce food and shelter for their families—some people could work in the food and construction industries while others became engineers, artists, and political leaders. Leading North American civilizations include the Maya and Aztec, in what is now Mexico, and the Iroquois, native to southeastern Canada and the northeastern United States. The vastness of the northern part of the continent encouraged other indigenous communities to live nomadic lifestyles. These cultures did not establish urban areas or agricultural centers. Instead, they followed favorable weather patterns , natural agricultural cycles, and animal migrations. The Plains Indians, for example, followed the seasonal grazing and migration of the American bison ( Bison bison ). Plains Indians include Lakota, Blackfoot, and Nez Perce. Plains Indians ate bison meat as their primary source of food, and used hides and bones to create dwellings, tools, and clothing. The range of the bison, which stretched from the southern Prairie Provinces of Canada, through the Great Plains , to the U.S.-Mexico border, coincided with the extent of Plains Indian communities. They were so interdependent that the eventual extinction of bison in many areas of the United States—through overhunting , development , and anti-indigenous federal policies—dramatically weakened the power and influence of the Plains people. The environment also impacted the traditional beliefs and social structure of North American indigenous communities. For instance, the Inuit, native to the Arctic, were deeply influenced by the aurora borealis , or Northern Lights. They believed the amazing light displays were images of their family and friends in the afterlife, the souls of animals and spirits, and visual guides for hunting. Inuit also believed that all things have souls, and that spirits existed to protect those souls. By respecting the ecosystem (the living and nonliving things in an environment), Inuit communities aimed to maintain a balanced existence. Contemporary Cultures Contemporary North American societies are also greatly influenced by the continent’s rich and varied environment. Our globalized world has pressed these societies to develop complex ways of interacting with, and profiting from, geographic resources. North America’s economic base is centered largely on the extraction, development, and trade of natural resources . Local communities, as well as national governments and regional organizations, also use natural resources. Guatemala, for example, has a traditional medicine system, which includes herbalists and spiritualists who use medicinal plants to treat ailments . Costa Rica has developed a network of sustainable and fair-trade coffee growers tailored to a growing international market. Tourism is also an important part of North America’s economy , especially for the small island nations of the Caribbean Sea. These island nations offer pristine tropical environments. Their multicolored coral reefs are one of the premier diving destinations in the world. The islands’ political and economic ties to the United States and Europe ease travel arrangements and language barriers. The islands see about 20 million visitors every year. In 2010, tourism contributed more than $39 billion to the region’s economy. Some organizations promote tourism that is more beneficial to local economies and ecosystems. The Caribbean Alliance for Sustainable Tourism , for example, aims to promote the sustainable management of the region’s natural resources. Sustainable tourism supports development of local businesses, as opposed to global corporations such as international hotel chains.

The Caribbean tourism industry is also developing more ecotourism opportunities for visitors. Ecotourism encourages tourists to have a minimal impact on the natural environment. Ecotourism promotes travel to natural destinations, such as coral reefs, instead of developed destinations such as casinos . North America’s multicultural history is another defining feature of the continent’s human geography. Immigrants have sought opportunities, particularly in the United States and Canada, for hundreds of years. Immigrants from Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America have contributed to the development of the continent. Immigrants or children of immigrants to North America have become scientific, business, and cultural leaders. The strong presence of immigrants is reflected in present-day ethnic neighborhoods : the Cuban “Little Havana” in Miami, Florida, U.S.; the Somali “Little Mogadishu” in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.; the Korean “Koreatown” in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; and the North African “Little Maghreb” in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, are just a few. Mexico City’s “Barrio Chino” is one of the smallest Chinatowns in the world, only two city blocks in length. Yet Barrio Chino counts 3,000 families of Chinese heritage within its boundaries. Many immigrants are refugees . According to the United Nations, a refugee is a person who resides outside the country of their nationality for fear of being persecuted . Refugees may fear economic hardship, or political or social pressure. Refugees may also immigrate because of a natural disaster . Major refugee populations in Canada have included residents fleeing civil war in Sri Lanka, political oppression in Pakistan, and violence in Colombia. Major refugee populations in the United States have included residents fleeing poverty in Ethiopia, political oppression in Vietnam and Cuba, and earthquakes in Haiti. Since 2006, Ottawa, Canada, has been the site for World Refugee Week, which features the work of artists, academics, and activists from around the globe. This celebration of diversity is echoed in the many ethnic and cultural celebrations that take place across North America. Political Geography North America's history and development have been shaped by its political geography. Political geography is the internal and external relationships between its various governments, citizens, and territories. Historic Issues Widespread contact between the Indigenous people of North America and European explorers was the defining moment for the continent’s political geography. Italian explorer Christopher Columbus’ first landing on Caribbean soil in 1492 set in motion the voyages of other Europeans: Spanish explorers Hernando De Soto and Ponce de Leoón; French explorer Jacques Cartier; and British explorers Sebastian Cabot and Henry Hudson. The voyages of these explorers inspired various European countries to claim and colonize North American soil. European colonizers found different ways to work with and against North America’s Indigenous communities. Colonizers in what is now the U.S. pushed native populations to the west. Through disease, war, and forced relocation, many native communities were exterminated. The large Indigenous territories were reduced to isolated reservations . Colonizers in present-day Canada set up a reservation system that protected many Indian settlements but isolated them from development. Intermarriage between Europeans and natives created a French-Indian community known today as the Metis . In Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, native populations were more fully integrated into the political and social systems. Mestizos , people of European and indigenous descent, have greatly contributed to the social structure and culture of Latin America. Cooperation and conflict have dramatically affected the relationships between North American countries. The United States and Canada have the longest nonmilitarized border in the world, for instance. This peaceful border reflects a stable, cooperative relationship between the two countries. North America’s history is dotted with conflict, however. The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) resulted in the United States acquiring 1,294,994 square kilometers (500,000 square miles) of Mexican territory, extending from the Rio Grande to the Pacific Coast. Conflicts have also caused tensions among residents of a single country. The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) resulted in all French territory east of the Mississippi River being ceded to Britain. This dramatically shifted Canada’s political geography, creating divisions between French Canadians and those of the British Commonwealth. This division still influences Canadian politics. North American countries have also suffered through civil wars. The civil wars that occurred in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador between the 1970s and 1990s killed tens of thousands of civilians and pushed many others to immigrate to Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The region also became a hotspot for foreign policy and financial assistance. The United States, for instance, aimed to protect its economic and political interests by backing various military governments and guerrilla groups. Contemporary Issues Today, North America’s political geography is deeply influenced by economic and demographic trends. Two important policies—the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, signed in 1994 and ended in 2020) and the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR, signed in 2004)—have affected trade between countries on the continent. Most significantly, the agreements have reduced or eliminated duties and tariffs . A duty is a kind of tax charged for items purchased outside the country. A tariff is another kind of tax, charged on imports and exports.

Both policies have eliminated duties on U.S. and Canadian agricultural exports, such as corn, wheat, and soybeans. The agreements have also reduced tariffs on goods like coffee, sugar, fruits, and vegetables. These are important exports for the rest of the continent. While the agreements have eased trade between countries and regions of North America, they have also caused major political and economic problems. Corn imports to Mexico have impoverished many Mexican farmers, who cannot compete against the lower U.S. or Canadian prices. NAFTA is also believed to have pushed many industries out of the United States and into the cheaper labor markets of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Companies find it less expensive to manufacture goods in these places for many reasons. Wages are lower and there are fewer health and safety regulations . Because there are often fewer restrictions on child labor and fewer opportunities for education, many companies find many more workers. These cheaper labor markets reduce the strength of the U.S. manufacturing sector . Immigration is perhaps the most sensitive aspect of North America’s political geography. Most immigration is fueled by poverty. People from North America’s low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), such as Haiti, frequently immigrate to the continent’s high-income countries (HICs), such as the United States. Immigration can be a long, difficult process. It involves more than just the physical migration from one nation to another. The governments of both countries must agree to the migration. Immigrants must often learn a new language and culture, including ways of dressing, eating, and socializing. Immigrants wishing to become citizens must also take classes to prove they are loyal to their new country. Often, immigrants must depend on luck: In the United States and Canada, lottery (randomized) systems often determine which immigrants can legally migrate. As a result of these difficulties, many impoverished immigrants from Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America have illegally settled in HICs. Illegal immigrants migrate for the same reasons legal immigrants do—to look for better economic and political opportunities. Critics of illegal immigration say these immigrants are more likely to commit a crime and use public welfare programs, such as those that help pay for education and medical care. Critics say these immigrants do not contribute to society by paying taxes that fund these public programs. Future Issues After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States and all of North America became more concerned with safety. National security at the international, regional, and domestic level will continue to be an important issue. Internationally, the HICs of North America, especially the United States, continue to negotiate their diplomatic presence in the world while claiming to protect themselves from terrorist attacks at home. Drug trafficking has become more pronounced regionally, especially along the Panama-Colombia border and the U.S.-Mexico border. This trade has been linked to the extreme violence that currently afflicts northern Mexico, damaging political relations between Mexico and the United States. One of the most important aspects of North America’s political and financial future rests largely on its efforts to minimize the effects of climate change . The regulation or reduction of carbon emissions is perhaps the most important part of reducing global warming and minimizing the effects of climate change. As part of the 2009 international agreement known as the Copenhagen Accord, some North American countries agreed to reduce emissions. The United States, one of the world’s largest producers of emissions, agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. Costa Rica pledged to be entirely carbon neutral by 2021.

Population Density The continent contains 57 people per square kilometer (22 people per square mile).

Highest Elevation Denali, Alaska, United States (6,190 meters/20,310 feet)

Most Renewable Electricity Produced 96.7 percent of the power of Belize comes from hydropower and biomass.

Largest Urban Area 23.7 million people live in the metropolitan area of the New York City, New York, United States.

Largest Watershed The Mississippi River has an area of three million square kilometers (1.15 million square miles).

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4 North America

Introduction.

North America as a continent extends from the polar regions of the Arctic in northern Canada and Alaska all the way south through Mexico and the countries of Central America. Geographers usually study the continent by dividing it into two separate realms based on differences in physical and cultural geography: North America (the US and Canada) and Middle America (Mexico and Central America, as well as the Caribbean). Both the United States and Canada share similar physical geography characteristics as well as a common development history with either a British or French colonial legacy. Mexico and Central America are dominated by more tropical climates and were colonized mainly by the Spanish. The United States and Canada—the second- and third-largest countries in the world in physical area, respectively—make up more than 13 percent of the world’s total landmass. The Atlantic Ocean borders their eastern edge, and the Pacific Ocean creates their western boundary. To the north is the Arctic Ocean. The North American region is highly urbanized—about 80 percent of the population lives in cities—but vast areas, especially in Canada, are sparsely populated. Although a small percent is native, most of North America’s diverse population consists of immigrants or descendants of immigrants from other world regions. The United States is the world’s largest economy, and both countries enjoy high standards of living as technologically developed countries.

4.1 Introducing the Realm

Learning Objectives

• Define the physiographic regions of North America.
• Explain the two dominant climate patterns in North America.
• Find out which three European countries had the most significant early influence on North America, what parts of the region they dominated, and what their long-term impacts have been.
• Determine the population distribution of the United States and Canada.

North America is divided into a number of physical regions with distinct landforms. The western part of the continent is marked by north-south mountain ranges in the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Mountains and Valleys physiographic provinces, with the Intermontane Basins and Plateaus in between. The eastern portion of North America is defined by the ancient Appalachian Highlands, a mountain range that is much less rugged than the Rockies but with no less influence on the history and development of the United States. The interior of the continent is characterized by plains—the Interior Lowlands and the Great Plains. To the north is the Canadian Shield, geologically the oldest part of North America, and a sparsely populated area with poor soils. At the southern and eastern edge of the continent is the Gulf-Atlantic Coastal Plain, a relatively flat zone that extends from New York to Texas.

The climates of the United States and Canada include the frigid type E climate of the tundra of northern Canada and Alaska, the tropical type A climate of southern Florida and Hawaii, the type C climates of the humid eastern United States, the seasonal type D climates of the northern United States and most of Canada, and the arid type B climates of the Southwest and Great Plains. In general, there are two different climate patterns common in North America. The first pattern is that temperatures get warmer as you travel from north to south and get closer to the equator. The second pattern is that there is a decrease in precipitation as you move from east to west across the continent until you reach the Pacific Coast, where rainfall is abundant again.

The second climate pattern is created by the rain shadow effect of the western mountain ranges. As wet air masses move from the Pacific Ocean over the North American continent, they run into the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada. The Cascade ranges of Washington and Oregon cut off moisture from falling on the leeward side of the mountains; thus eastern Washington and eastern Oregon are semiarid. The western United States experiences a strong rain shadow effect. As the air rises to pass the mountains, water vapor condenses and is released as rain and snow. This means that west of these mountain ranges there is much more precipitation than to their east, resulting in arid and semiarid lands. The entire Great Plains of the western United States are affected by the rain shadow effect and have a semiarid type B climate.

A. European Realms in North America

Both the United States and Canada are products of European colonialism. North America was inhabited by many Native American groups before the Europeans arrived. Complex native societies, federations, and traditional local groups faced the European invasion. While the indigenous population of North America was robust at the time of the European encounter, within a few generations, these native peoples were overwhelmed by the diseases, weapons, and sheer numbers of the European arrivals.

The Europeans—mainly the Spanish, French, and British—left a strong imprint on their North American colonies. The oldest colonial city in North America is St. Augustine, Florida (1565), founded by Spain when Florida was a remote portion of the Spanish Americas. Spain also had outposts in what are now California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. The forms of settlement characteristic of those areas were similar to the Spanish colonies of Central America. While Spain governed what is now the southern United States, France ruled Canada and much of the interior of the North American continent. The French first came to Canada in the late 1500s to engage in fishing in the North Atlantic and soon expanded their reach by creating a fur trade in the area surrounding the  Great Lakes  and throughout the  Mississippi River  system.

Although there were fewer settlers from France than from other European countries—especially in what became the United States—this French era left behind place names (Baton Rouge and Detroit), patterns of land use, and a French-speaking population in Canada. Despite the early influence of Spain and France in North America, most North Americans speak English as their native language as a result of Britain’s colonial dominance in the United States and Canada. The earliest permanent British colony, Jamestown, was founded in 1607 in what became Virginia. The British built up a successful empire in the New World. Their thirteen American colonies became populous, economically robust, and militarily strong enough to gain independence in 1776. Canada functions as an independent country but remains part of the British Commonwealth.

B. Population Distribution in North America

The US population was estimated at more than 325 million in 2017. Canada now has over thirty-five million people. The US population is growing by about 2.5 million people each year. A little less than half the growth can be attributed to immigration and the rest to natural increase. The pace of growth is slower than the world average but more rapid than many other industrialized countries such as those in Europe.

The population is not uniformly spread over North America, nor are population growth rates the same in all locations. Most Canadians live near the US border. The North American population tends to be clustered in cities. Additionally, the population has been moving southward and westward. US states experiencing the greatest rates of population growth include those located on the southern portion of the eastern seaboard, as well as Texas, Nevada, Utah, California, Oregon, and Washington. Three states—California, Texas, and Florida—accounted for about a third of the entire US population growth since 1990. Still, the Northeast is the most densely populated area of the country thanks, in large part, to the Megalopolis (“mega-metropolis”) that encompasses the cities from Boston south to Washington, DC (sometimes referred to as Bos-Wash). The largest concentration of Canadians lives in southern Ontario and Quebec near Lakes Erie and Ontario and the St. Lawrence River in an area often referred to by geographers as Canada’s “Main Street.”

In general, the population of minorities is growing most rapidly. Some of the fastest-growing populations in the United States are Hispanics. Another interesting factor in population growth is the increase in life expectancy. As more people live longer, the growth of the segment of the population aged sixty-five has doubled in the last fifty years. Of this group, the greatest increase was seen in people aged eighty-five years and older.

The American population tends to be on the move. The US Census Bureau data show that the average American moves once every seven years; these data further predict that about forty million people move each year. Data also indicate Americans will move to a metropolitan area. Urbanization has been a trend since about 1950. Until that time, most Americans lived in small towns or more rural settings. The population density of the cities, and especially the suburban areas, has grown steadily since that time, bringing about a rural-to-urban population shift. Now a significant majority of people in North America live in suburban areas.

Key Takeaways

• The United States and Canada have mountain ranges along their eastern and western portions, with lowlands in the middle.
• In general, temperatures get cooler as you move from south to north, and the climate gets more arid as you move from east to west across the continent.
• The Spanish were the earliest Europeans to establish a permanent settlement in the United States or Canada. They controlled the territory in the southern edge of what is now the United States, and their influence is still felt today through the Mexican American culture in that region.
• The French colonized eastern Canada, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi River valley. Although the number of settlers was small outside Quebec, French place names and French land-use patterns are still evident.
• The British colonized the eastern coast of what became the United States. The number of English-speaking settlers was so high that the English culture dominated the region and left a strong long-term impact in terms of language, religion, and many other cultural aspects.
• The more than 325 million people who live in the United States and the more than 35 million people who live in Canada are not evenly distributed across North America. The realm continues to urbanize, and minority groups are the fastest-growing segment of the population.

4.2 United States: Early Development and Globalization

• Explain how the United States acquired its geographic boundaries.
• Examine patterns of immigration to and migration within the United States through the period of westward settlement.
• Examine urban growth and its connection to development of new forms of transportation.
• Explain which economic patterns helped the United States become the world’s largest economy.
• Consider how the concept of the American Dream has been exported globally.

A. Early Development Patterns

With abundant resources and opportunity, the original thirteen colonies prospered and expanded into what became the fifty US states. The political geography of this nation was a product of various treaties and acquisitions that eventually resulted in the country extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Fueling the expansion was the concept of  Manifest Destiny , the belief of some Americans that the new nation was divinely predestined to expand across the continent. The United States negotiated with France for the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, acquiring millions of acres in the central United States. Florida was acquired from Spain in 1819, and Texas was annexed in 1845. The British sold portions of the Pacific Northwest to the United States, and the 49th parallel was established as the boundary between the northwestern United States and Canada in 1846. Through conflicts with Mexico, large portions of the West were ceded to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Alaska was purchased from the Russians in 1867 for only $7.2 million. Alaska and Hawaii were the last two possessions to enter into statehood, which they did in 1959.

B. Westward Settlement Patterns and European Immigration

The thirteen original colonies are often grouped into three regions, each with its own economic and cultural patterns. These three areas—New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the South—are considered culture hearths , or places where culture formed and from which it spread. The three regions were source areas for westward migration, and migrants from these regions carried with them the cultural traditions of their culture hearths. New England was characterized by poor soils, subsistence agriculture, and fishing communities and was the birthplace of North America’s Industrial Revolution. Its largest city was Boston. Settlers from New England traveled west across New York State and into the upper Midwest and the Great Lakes region. The Mid-Atlantic region, focused on Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was known for its fertile soils, prosperous small-scale agriculture, and multinational population. Prosperous farming led to a vibrant economy and a robust network of towns and cities. People who wanted to migrate west from this region traveled down the Great Valley into the Appalachian Mountains and across the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky, or they crossed Pennsylvania and traveled west via the Ohio River valley. The heart of the South was Virginia, a region oriented around plantation agriculture. The South was overwhelmingly rural, and in time the bulk of its agricultural workforce consisted of slaves brought to the United States from West Africa.

Westward migration was spurred along by the gold boom in California (1849) and by the completion of the transcontinental railroad (1869). The settlement frontier pushed westward during the course of the nineteenth century and was declared “closed” by the Bureau of the Census in 1890. This did not mean that settlers were spread uniformly across the continent by 1890; indeed, vast areas of the Great Plains and the mountain west remained sparsely populated by Europeans at that time. The Homestead Act of 1862 also encouraged westward migration by offering 160 acres of free land to households willing to move west. The contiguous United States had been organized into official states by the end of the nineteenth century, except for Oklahoma (1907), Arizona (1912), and New Mexico (1912).

Most US residents at its founding in 1776 had roots in Great Britain, with large numbers from other northern and western European countries and many others from Africa (most of whom were slaves in the South). During the nineteenth century, migrants continued to immigrate to the United States as its economy grew, especially after the 1830s. Germans and Irish began arriving in large numbers, joining others from Britain and other countries, predominantly those in western Europe. As the century progressed, others from southern and eastern Europe, from countries such as Italy, Russia, and Austria, became the most significant stream of immigrants to the United States. The new arrivals were different from the early British immigrants: they practiced Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Christianity (not Protestantism), they primarily moved to urban areas, and they found work in the new manufacturing sector growing rapidly in the Northeast and around the Great Lakes. Very few immigrants came from Latin America or Asia at that time.

C. Industrial Development and Urbanization

The  Industrial Revolution  that began in Great Britain in the late eighteenth century eventually moved across the Atlantic and took hold in the United States. Rapid industrial growth emerged in the nineteenth century and was focused in the northeastern United States around the Great Lakes in an area called the  Manufacturing Belt . Mechanized manufacturing began with textiles (New England), moved to steel and other metals (Pennsylvania and Indiana), and later was dominated by the manufacture of automobiles (Michigan). Of course, manufacturing would not have been possible without an abundant supply of power. Coal mining became an important industry in western Pennsylvania and in Appalachia.

Manufacturing took place in the cities and towns of the Manufacturing Belt. Not until the second half of the twentieth century did manufacturing move to rural areas; until then, it was almost entirely an urban activity. Since the 1980s, many manufacturing jobs have shifted away from the northeastern US to other regions of the country, especially in the southern and western states. This has resulted in the Manufacturing Belt being referred to as the Rust Belt .

As the United States went through its Industrial Revolution, its population shifted from being almost entirely rural to being mostly urban. In 1790, only about five percent of the US population lived in urban areas; by 1920, about 50 percent lived in cities. As the rural to urban shift took place, the function and form of US cities also changed.

From the colonial era until the late nineteenth century, US cities were walking cities. Because most Americans lived on farms, cities were small, compact, and centrally oriented: everything was located within walking distance. Only wealthy people had access to transportation by horse, and city dwellers needed to live within a short distance of where they worked, shopped, and carried out all their activities. The invention of the electric streetcar (1888) allowed cities to increase in size. People could live farther from their place of employment as long as they lived within walking distance of a streetcar line. Streetcar suburbs grew up along streetcar lines, and these neighborhoods were often segregated by ethnicity. Fewer people lived in downtowns, which became dedicated to retail and manufacturing. Cities remained oriented around a  central business district (CBD), which was often located near the railway station. Factories needed to be near transportation for both shipping in parts and shipping out completed products and so that workers could easily get to work.

Large numbers of middle class Americans began acquiring automobiles after about 1920; this eventually led to a complete rethinking of the spatial layout of the city. Automobile suburbs sprang up outside the traditional city limits as people were able to buy homes far from streetcar lines or railway stations. Cities became increasingly decentralized: people could go shopping in suburban malls instead of downtown department stores, factories could spring up at highway interchanges and not only near rivers and the railroad, and people could live in one suburb and work in another instead of living in the suburbs and working downtown. Neighborhoods became even more racially and economically segregated than they had in the past as middle-class whites moved into the new automobile suburbs and left the poorer African Americans behind in the cities.

By the late twentieth century, the automobile had led to a new urban form: the  edge city . Edge cities are areas of dense urban development outside the boundaries of the traditional city. They often form at the intersection of major interstate highways and contain shopping malls, office complexes, high-rise apartment buildings, industrial parks, restaurants, and hotels. Sometimes edge cities are called suburban downtowns . Edge cities have supplanted the CBD as the destination of choice for Americans, whether they are heading to work or to play.

D. Economic Changes

During the colonial era and into the nineteenth century, when the majority of Americans lived on farms and worked in agriculture, most economic activity in the United States took place within the primary economic sector. Today, the primary sector is still an important component of the US economy, but far fewer people are employed in it. For example, less than 1 percent of Americans make their living by farming, but agricultural output has continued to grow because of advancements in mechanization and the development of high-tech seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. The United States has been able to export surplus agricultural output to other parts of the world. Fewer people work in coal mines than in the past, but because of new mining technologies and methods such as mountaintop removal, coal production remains high.

The geographic distribution of primary activities depends both on the location of natural features such as physical geography and climate and on the location of the market for a particular crop or resource. The nineteenth-century German economist Johann von Thünen created a model that predicted land use around a central market. In his theory, land closest to the market would be used to produce crops that were expensive to transport, such as dairy. Land far from the market would be used for the production of crops that were less expensive to transport and less perishable, such as grain. The von Thünen model  predicts a series of concentric rings surrounding a central market, with each ring producing a different kind of crop. If the von Thünen model is applied at a much larger scale to the United States as a whole, with the densely populated urban zone from Boston to Washington, DC (Megalopolis), used as the central market, the model does a fairly good job predicting the United States’ agricultural land use. Dairy farms are found close to the market, grain farms are farther away, and ranch lands used for livestock production are even farther away.

Anything that involves the processing of raw materials—manufacturing—is a secondary activity. As the United States moved into the Industrial Revolution and into the mid-twentieth century, the percentage of the US workforce involved in manufacturing grew from almost nothing until it peaked in the late 1970s. It was the main area of economic growth for decades. Although manufacturing was present in most areas of the country, it was focused in the northeastern United States and along the Great Lakes. Factories were close both to the reserves of labor and to the markets for manufactured products found in the densely populated Northeast. The steel industry was located in Pittsburgh and its environs because of the area’s access to iron ore (mined in Minnesota and transported via the Great Lakes) and to coal (mined in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and other parts of Appalachia).

As manufacturing has grown in other parts of the world, the secondary economic sector has declined in the United States. US labor statistics indicate that the United States lost about five million manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2010. Many of these jobs were lost to countries with lower labor costs, such as Mexico or China.

The third group of economic activities takes place in the tertiary and quaternary sectors, commonly known as the service sector. Tertiary and quaternary activities create services, not physical products. Service jobs include everything from engineering to finance, restaurants to sports, and childcare to medicine. The tertiary sector makes up more than three quarters of the US economy, as measured by its share of the  gross domestic product (GDP) , which is the total value of all goods and services produced in a country in a given year.

Table 1. US GDP by Sector (2016 Data). Source: “The World Factbook,” Central Intelligence Agency, www.cia.gov.

These figures show that the US has shifted to a postindustrial service economy . The rise of the  information age  in the latter part of the twentieth century shifted the workforce into the information sector. By 2016, only about one percent of the US workforce was employed in agriculture, 20 percent in industry, and the rest in services (80 percent).

The locations of service-sector jobs are much more flexible than are jobs in the primary or secondary sectors. They are called  footloose jobs : an accountant can live in New York or in Denver, whereas it is much more difficult for factories to move from one place to another and it is impossible for farms to relocate. Many of the information-technology jobs are emerging in the southern regions of the United States called the  Sun Belt . Southern cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, and Phoenix are centers of innovation and population growth. The warmer climate, combined with a lower cost of living and less congestion, makes the Sun Belt an attractive location for emerging information-based companies. Note that the popularity of the South and West for service-sector jobs only came about after the invention and adoption of air-conditioning. Air-conditioning was not widespread until after the Second World War in the 1950s.

E. Americanism and Globalization

The freedom of personal expression in the United States has supported individual ingenuity and creative ambition to create the largest economy in the world. US citizens have pushed American corporations to become a major force in the world markets. Products and franchises from the United States are being distributed throughout the world. Items such as fast food, computers, news networks, and Hollywood movies have become the products of choice in countries across the globe. The English language dominates the Internet, which has been heavily influenced by US corporations. The power of the American Dream —the idea that through hard work anyone can achieve upward mobility and financial success—as it is portrayed in the US media holds sway in the minds of people both in the United States and abroad.

US news networks, such as CNN, are so dominant that small countries, having no resources to create networks, rely on the US networks to deliver their world news. US fast food franchises, of which McDonald’s is the largest, exist in over one hundred countries. Despite humble beginnings in Arkansas, Walmart grew to become the world’s largest corporation. It has become the buyer and seller of retail trade that shapes and molds cultural attitudes and fashions internationally.

The size of the US population and the country’s vast resource base have allowed it to become a world superpower. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States became the most powerful military force in the world. The United States has also dominated the world’s economy and its communications networks. The advancements of multinational corporations have in essence enabled the sale of America to the rest of the world. The selling of American products and the large consumer market in the United States have provided profits that have fueled global economic markets.

The United States has become a worldwide franchise of its own. Corporate colonialism has advanced the American brand to a level that is now synonymous with consumerism, success, and power. Media advancements have promoted the concept of the American Dream worldwide. The reaction of the global community includes both admiration and disdain. Many view Americanism as interchangeable with globalization. Some welcome it; others reject it. The country of Iran is an example of this dichotomy. Young people in Iran wearing blue jeans gather in secret to watch American television programming from a hidden illegal satellite dish, while at the same time anti-American forces in their government condemn America as decadent, immoral, and imperialistic.

Corporate colonialism has become a dominant force impacting the global cultural fabric. Supporters appreciate access to American goods and services, while opponents claim that the English language and the American corporate franchise system are destroying the culture and heritage of millions who see their unique traditional ways of life being overshadowed and destroyed.

• The United States’ territory expanded gradually through various treaties and land acquisitions and was influenced by the concept of Manifest Destiny.
• The three main colonial regions in the United States—New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the South—had their own distinct economic foundations, settlement patterns, and social structures. People from these regions moved westward in particular migration patterns.
• In the beginning of the nineteenth century, most immigrants were from western and northern Europe. By the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, immigrants were coming in large numbers from southern and Eastern Europe and moving to industrial cities of the Northeast.
• City structure changed from the walking cities of colonial America, to the railroad and streetcar cities of the late nineteenth century, to the automobile cities of the mid- and late-twentieth century.
• The US economy was initially based in the primary economic sector (particularly farming), then was based in the secondary economic sector (manufacturing), and is now oriented around the tertiary and quaternary economic sectors (services and information).
• The diverse immigrants who have created American society have been unified by common aspirations and common ideals that created the concept of the American Dream. The concept indicates that regardless of one’s station in life, by working hard, applying oneself, and following the rules, one can obtain upward economic mobility.

4.3 United States: Population and Religion

• Explain the concepts of the cultural melting pot and the American Dream and how they have contributed to American society and culture.
• Describe the current demographic profile of the United States.
• Identify the size, distribution, and other characteristics of the Hispanic population in the United States. Explain the two most significant processes that led to the spatial distribution of African Americans in the United States.
• Describe the distribution of the dominant religious affiliations in the United States.

A. The American “Melting Pot”

Early immigration to America was dominated by people from the British Isles, resulting in an American population for whom speaking English and practicing Protestant Christianity was the norm. There were some regional exceptions to this, such as Catholicism in Maryland and the widespread speaking of German in Pennsylvania, but by and large English and Protestantism were standard in the American colonies. As migrants arrived in the United States from non-English-speaking countries, within a generation they learned English and assimilated into American society, giving rise to the idea of the United States as a cultural melting pot. People were drawn to the United States by the hope of economic opportunities; most immigrants were poor and came to the United States to make a living and improve their financial well-being. They viewed assimilation into mainstream society as a necessity for success. They believed in the American Dream—that through hard work, you could achieve upward mobility and financial success no matter your background. The dream came true for millions of Americans but remains out of reach for many who live in poverty.

As of 2017, the United States was home to approximately 326 million people and was the third-most populated country in the world after China and India. Among developed countries, the US population is one of the fastest growing, at about 1 percent each year. This is thanks to a fertility rate of about 2.1 that is higher than the 1.5 for that of most European countries, as well as positive net migration (more people immigrating to the United States than emigrating from it). In terms of human well-being, life expectancy is more than seventy-eight years for men, and the average woman can expect to live more than eighty years. While this may seem high, especially when compared with a century ago, life expectancy in the United States is lower than in forty-nine other countries.

Although English has remained the dominant language, as a country of immigrants, the United States is home to people from all corners of the world and home to many cultural or ethnic minority groups. According to the 2010 census, the ethnic minority groups in the United States included 16.3 percent Hispanic (who can be of any race); 12.6 percent black or African American; 5.0 percent Asian and Pacific Islander; and 1.0 percent Native American (American Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts).

B. The US Hispanic Population

One of the most striking demographic shifts in the past few decades has been the dramatic increase in the Hispanic/Latino population in the United States. In 1970, Hispanics made up less than 5 percent of the US population, but by 2010, forty-eight million Hispanics made up about 16 percent of the population. For the first time, Hispanics were the largest ethnic minority in the United States, surpassing blacks as the largest minority starting with the 2000 US census (12.5 percent Hispanic compared with 12.3 percent black). The US Hispanic population doubled between the 1990 and 2000 censuses. Between 2000 and 2006, Hispanic population growth accounted for about half the nation’s growth and grew about four times faster than the country’s population as a whole.

The growth of the US Hispanic population is a direct result of increased immigration from Latin America to the United States in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and the Hispanic population having higher fertility rates than the non-Hispanic US population. Nearly half the Hispanics in the United States live in California or Texas, although there has been a large increase in the Hispanic population outside those states since 2000, especially in the South. For example, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and North and South Carolina all experienced Hispanic population growth rates between 55 and 61 percent from 2000 to 2006. All regions of the country saw double-digit growth rates of their Hispanic populations during that time. In places such as California, the large Hispanic population has an especially significant impact on the economy, politics, and every aspect of social life: more than one-third of Californians are Hispanic (37 percent), while 42 percent are non-Hispanic white, and a much smaller minority are African American (7 percent).

Who are the Hispanics living in the United States? Most were born in the United States (60 percent), while the rest are immigrants. Two thirds are either from Mexico or of Mexican descent, while others hail from the US territory of Puerto Rico, Cuba, or the Dominican Republic. Note that all Puerto Ricans are US citizens and can move to and from the US mainland without any special documentation requirements. More Hispanics come from Central America than from South America. Hispanics work in all professions but are found in professions such as agriculture, construction, and food service at higher rates than the country’s non-Hispanic population.

The draw of opportunities and advantages has always pulled people toward the United States. While many Latin American immigrants enter the United States legally, according to the US Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics, there were about 10.8 million undocumented immigrants residing in the United States as of 2010; 62 percent were from Mexico. This number is lower than it was in previous years, possibly because of the economic recession and higher-than-usual rates of unemployment. The US-Mexican border is about 1,970 miles long and runs through an arid and open region between the two countries. It is difficult to control the illegal immigration across this border, as the attraction to American jobs is so compelling that people will risk death to cross the deserts of the Southwest. According to 2010 estimates, undocumented workers make up about 5 percent of the United States’ civilian workforce, including approximately 24 percent of the agricultural workforce.

The amount of remittances  sent from undocumented workers in the United States to Mexico is estimated in the billions of dollars. The remittances from Mexican nationals living outside Mexico and sending money home to their families are Mexico’s second-largest source of foreign income. Without remittances, many Mexican families would have a difficult time making ends meet.

C. The African American Population

Most African Americans were concentrated in the South before the Civil War, where they worked as slaves in the cotton and tobacco plantations that supported the region. In some counties, blacks made up most of the population, and this did not change when the war was over. Many of the newly freed slaves remained as poor agricultural workers in the South well into the twentieth century. Even as late as 1910, seven out of every eight African Americans lived in the South.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the industrialization of northern cities was accelerating, the increased need for factory workers was largely met by immigration from Europe, especially from southern and eastern Europe. However, when the First World War began (1914), European immigration began to slow down. European immigration then nearly ground to a halt in the 1920s as Americans set quotas in place to reduce the number of Eastern European immigrants. At that time, the factories in the Manufacturing Belt continued to need workers, but instead of European workers, they recruited African Americans from the South.

This led to a massive migration of blacks from the South to cities of the North and West. This migration was so significant to African Americans in the United States that it is called the Great Migration . Between 1910 and 1925, more than 10 percent of African Americans made the journey north, and even more followed. Examining a map of the distribution of African Americans today shows the legacy of the Great Migration, as blacks live in many parts of the United States, both in the South and in postindustrial cities of the north and the Midwest. Blacks also now live in Sun Belt cities, as people of all races look for jobs related to the new information technology and service industries.

D. Geography of Religion in the United States

Most early settlers to the United States were Christians: Puritans lived in New England and Anglicans (later called Episcopalians) lived in Virginia. Roman Catholic immigrants settled in Maryland, and members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) founded Pennsylvania. Even within that overall picture, there was a great deal of religious diversity in the United States, and that diversity increased as new arrivals came from different countries with different religious backgrounds. The current pattern of religious affiliation in the United States remains quite complex, and one can find observers of nearly every major religion, and many minor ones, in virtually every area of the country. That being said, there are clear patterns to the geography of religion in the United States that tell stories of immigration and migration history, as well as stories about other aspects of American history. The map of leading church bodies shows regions of religious observance that are worth examining.

The most striking feature of the map is the block of red in the Southeast in which Baptist churches are the leading church body. Although Baptist churches are the leading religious body in about 45 percent of all counties in the United States, most of those counties are in the South. This region is considered the nation’s Bible Belt , and it is a region in which churches are more likely than in other parts of the country to teach a literal interpretation of the Bible. Baptist churches grew in popularity in the South after the Civil War as more liturgical denominations such as Methodists went into decline. Baptist churches are popular among both African American and white residents.

Another Protestant region is northern Appalachia and the lower Midwest from Ohio to Iowa and Kansas. Some of these counties are mostly Baptist, some mostly Methodist, and in others it is Christian churches (Disciples of Christ and similar denominations) that prevail. The Methodist and other Christian areas were heavily influenced by the Second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century, which promoted the theology that every person could be saved through revivals.

The third Protestant region is the northern Midwest and Great Plains: Minnesota, the Dakotas, and surrounding areas. This was the destination of German and Scandinavian Lutheran settlers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the leading denominations today in much of that area remain Lutheran.

The Roman Catholic Church, which is the leading religious body in 40 percent of US counties, is well represented in the Northeast, West, and Southwest. In the Northeast and Midwest, the Catholic dominance points to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century immigration from Roman Catholic countries in Europe such as Italy, Ireland, and Poland. Those earlier Catholics have been joined more recently by large numbers of Hispanic immigrants. The dominance of Roman Catholics in the western United States, the Southwest, and even Florida in the Southeast are a reflection of the strong Hispanic presence in those parts of the country.

In the western United States, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or Mormon church) dominates a region including Utah and surrounding states. Utah was the destination of Mormons as they migrated westward during the mid-nineteenth century.

• US immigrants learned English and assimilated into American society, giving rise to the idea of the United States as a cultural melting pot.
• Immigrants created the American Dream—the idea that by working hard and following the rules, one could achieve upward mobility and financial success regardless of one’s background or heritage.
• The Hispanic population is the largest minority group in the United States, and its population is growing.
• Hispanics have an especially strong presence in California and Texas but are found all over the South as well as in rural and urban areas around the country.
• One-third of Hispanics are immigrants to the United States, and most undocumented workers in the United States are Hispanic (58 percent are from Mexico).
• Mexican nationals are an important component of the US workforce, and they send home billions of dollars each year in the form of remittances.
• African Americans are heavily represented in former plantation agricultural states of the South, as well as in cities of the Rust Belt and far West.
• Patterns of religious observance in the United States reflect immigration patterns.
• Identify where in the country most Canadians live and why.
• Identify and locate the dominant physical features of Canada.
• Distinguish between the French-speaking and English-speaking areas of Canada and discuss the key activities in the effort to promote French culture in Canada.
• Name the characteristics of some of the minority ethnic groups in Canada.
• Determine which economic sectors are at the core of the Canadian economy and how the Canadian and US economies are connected.

A. Canadian Provinces and Territories

Canada’s democratic state shares a similar developmental history and economic status with the United States. As of 2016, Canada had a population of just over thirty-five million, which is less than the population of California. Canada is slightly larger in area than the United States, making it the second-largest country in the world. However, despite this vast territory for a relatively small population, more than 90 percent of Canadians live within 150 miles of the US border. Northern Canada is not considered part of Canada’s  ecumene , or habitable zone, for permanent human settlement. Only a narrow band of territory in southern and eastern Canada has the climate and physical geography suitable for agricultural production and widespread settlement. Moreover, Canada’s economy is so closely tied to that of the United States that it makes sense for people to live close to the US border.

Canada consists of ten provinces and three territories. Ottawa is the nation’s capital, and Toronto is its largest city. Ontario has by far the largest population of any of Canada’s provinces, with nearly 40 percent of the total. Quebec, the dominantly French-speaking province, is home to about 23 percent. Almost everyone else lives in British Columbia, west of the Rocky Mountains (13 percent); in the prairies (18 percent); or along the Atlantic coast (7 percent). The wide-open areas of Canada’s far north are home to only one-third of 1 percent of the population.

Table 2. Canadian Provinces, Territories, and Capitals. Source: 2016 Canada Census Data.

B. Physical Geography of Canada

Type D (continental) climates dominate most of central Canada, with their characteristically warm summers and cold winters, although the farther north you go, the cooler the summers are. Canada’s west coast receives the most rainfall—between eighty and one hundred inches a year—while coastal areas in the Maritime Provinces can receive up to sixty inches per year. The northern territory of Nunavut barely receives ten inches per year, usually in the form of snow. Of course, far northern Canada has an arctic type E climate, and conditions there are so harsh that only a very few people inhabit it. The cultural influence of the colder climates and the long winters on the people is evident by the sports that are enjoyed by most Canadian citizens. Ice hockey is Canada’s most prevalent sport and its most popular spectator sport. Other sports such as curling are also common in Canada.

Canada has abundant natural resources for its population. The  Canadian Shield  is an area of rock and forest that covers much of central Canada around Hudson Bay. This region, and the area to the east and west of it, provides timber and minerals for Canadian industries and for export. In the Maritime Provinces of the east, the main economic activities include fishing and agriculture. Some of Canada’s best farmland is located along the St. Lawrence River  and in the southern Prairie Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. The St. Lawrence River region includes dairy farms and agriculture, which provide food for the larger cities of the region. The province of Ontario has fertile farmland on the north and east sides of the Great Lakes. The farmland in the Prairie Provinces has much larger grain and beef operations.

Centered in the province of Alberta is a large region of fossil fuel exploration. Coal, oil, and natural gas are found there in abundance, and much of it is exported to the United States. Oil is found absorbed in surface soil called tar sands and is being extracted for energy. When tar sands are heated, the oil is separated and refined for fuel. Projections are that there is more oil in the tar sands of Canada than in the underground reserves of Saudi Arabia. Natural resources have even filtered into the cultural arena: Edmonton’s professional hockey team is called the Edmonton Oilers.

The Rocky Mountains and the coastal ranges located in western Canada provide for mining and lumber mills. Vancouver, on the coast in British Columbia, has become a major port for Canada to export and import goods to and from the Pacific Rim. The Yukon Territory, also located in the mountains, has experienced a gold rush in years past. Canada has abundant natural resources to provide for its people and gain wealth.

C. British versus French Canada

French fishermen and fur traders initially colonized Canada, the British later took it from the French, and immigrants from various other countries moved there to farm and otherwise make a living. Although none of the provinces retain French names, countless cities—especially in Quebec—have French names, among them Montreal, Trois-Rivières, Charlesbourg, and Beauport.

The names of several provinces indicate the British connection: Nova Scotia means “New Scotland,” and it was so named by the British when they took over the island from the French. Prince Edward Island was named for the father of the famous nineteenth-century British queen, Victoria. You can see remnants of British colonialism in the way Canadian government is organized. Canada, like many countries of Europe, including Great Britain, is a parliamentary democracy. The monarch of the United Kingdom is still the top-ranking government official in Canada, but only as a figurehead. The queen (or king) appoints a governor general to be her (or his) representative in the Canadian federal government. Again, this is a symbolic position. There are two chambers, a House of Commons and a Senate. Members of the House of Commons are elected and are called members of Parliament (MPs). Senators are appointed to a lifelong term by the prime minister.

As of 2006, about 58 percent of Canadians spoke English as their primary language, French was the mother tongue of 22 percent, and another one-fifth of the population (20 percent) spoke a mother tongue other than English or French. For most of Canada the  lingua franca remains English. The French-speaking portion of Canada is a reminder of Canada’s history as a French colony. Many of today’s Francophones (French speakers) are descendants of those earlier French settlers. The proportion of French speakers in Canada is declining as more and more immigrants (who also have higher fertility rates than Francophones) arrive from other parts of the world and as more Francophones begin using English instead of French as their primary language. The new immigrants (along with native peoples) make up the 20 percent of Canada’s population who speak neither English nor French as their native language. About 90 percent of Canadian Francophones live in Quebec, which is a center of French culture in Canada.

The separation between French Canada and British Canada goes back to colonial times. Beginning in the 1530s, the French were the first to develop fur-trading activities in the region and colonize what is present-day Canada, calling it  New France . The French claimed much of the St. Lawrence River valley and the Great Lakes region, including the region that is now Ontario. When Britain began to dominate the eastern coast of North America in the 1680s, they entered into a series of wars with France. As a result of these wars, New France was eventually turned over to Britain.

Not wanting continued war with France, Britain allowed the French-dominated region to retain its land ownership system, civil laws, and Catholic faith. The Revolutionary War in 1776, which granted the United States independence from Great Britain, also pushed many people of English descent—especially those who had sided with the British during the Revolutionary War—from the United States into Canada. British North America no longer included the United States; Canada became the main British colony in North America.

In an attempt to keep the peace between French and English settlers, in 1791 the British Parliament divided Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada, which later evolved into the provinces of English-speaking Ontario and French-speaking Quebec. The Maritime Provinces of the east were then separated into individual provinces.

The cultural differences between Francophone Canada and the rest of Canada have since erupted into serious political conflicts. The Francophone areas, mainly southern Quebec, argue that they are treated unfairly, since they have to learn English but the rest of the country is not required to learn French.

During the second half of the twentieth century, many people in Quebec supported a separatist movement  that sought to break Quebec off from the rest of Canada into an independent country. In 1995, the separatist initiative lost in a public vote, but only by a small margin. The issue of Quebec’s sovereignty continued to be raised in the public arena. In 1998, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that Quebec could not separate from the rest of Canada under international law but that the matter would have to be negotiated between Quebec and the rest of Canada if secession was to proceed.

French and English are the two official languages of the Canadian government as a whole, but the French people in Quebec, fearing that English was dominating the media, the Internet, and industry to such an extent that it was endangering their French culture, have declared French as the only official language of the province. To combat the encroachment of English, laws were enacted in Quebec requiring all public advertising to be in French, or if other languages are used, they must be half the size of the French letters. All businesses employing more than fifty employees were required to conduct all business in French. Immigrants who wish to be citizens of Quebec must learn French. All primary and secondary education takes place in French unless the child’s parents were educated in English elsewhere in Canada. Civil servants dubbed the “language police” monitor and enforce the French language laws. A business found to be out of compliance with the language laws could be fined or shut down. Even though the official language of Quebec is French, since the national government takes place in both English and French, some services are still available in Quebec in English.

When secession was being considered, it was found that businesses that employed more than fifty employees did not want to switch over and conduct all their business in French; they were conducting all their business in English to work with the global economic community. In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)  was established between Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The goal was to open up new lines of business operations between the three countries and to increase economic opportunities to better compete with the European Union and the Pacific Rim nations. What would Quebec do if it separated from Canada? Would Quebec be able to join NAFTA? What if the other NAFTA partners cut off Quebec? Quebec would have faced serious economic consequences if they had separated from Canada. A number of English-speaking businesses have already moved to Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, to avoid changing to French. It appears Quebec will remain with the rest of Canada and work out any internal cultural issues.

D. Other Ethnic Groups in Canada

Of course, we cannot forget the native groups who were displaced when the Europeans arrived. About 1.2 million people who identify themselves as Aboriginal live in Canada, or about 3.8 percent of the total population. They include North American Indians (also called  First Nations ),  Métis (descendants of both Europeans and American Indians), and Inuit (inhabitants of the far Arctic north). Of those three groups, Inuit are the smallest, with only about fifty thousand remaining. These native people represent more than six hundred recognized groups and sixty-five language dialects, although only a handful of these languages are still spoken by a large enough core of people to remain viable languages for the long term.

Quebec is not the only place where devolutionary forces have been dividing cultural groups in Canada. In 1999, Nunavut officially broke from the Northwest Territory to become its own territory. Nunavut has only about thirty-five thousand people in an area larger than any other province or territory in Canada. It comprises about one-fifth of Canada’s land area. Most of the people who had claimed the land before the Europeans arrived are Inuit. Iqaluit, the capital city of Nunavut, is on Baffin Island near Canada’s east coast.

Canada has a great deal of ethnic diversity. One measure of this is the number of languages spoken there. One source estimates that there are about 145 languages spoken in Canada, including English and French. This reflects both the rich native heritage and the history of immigration from around the world. As of 2006, the foreign-born population was 6.2 million, or nearly 20 percent of Canada’s population. There are few countries that match this level of immigration. Even the United States had only about a 12.5 percent foreign-born population in 2006.

The current surge of immigrants to Canada does not include many Europeans. Instead, these immigrants come from Asian countries, especially China and countries in South Asia such as India and Pakistan. About one in five people in Canada belong to a nonwhite minority group. According to the 2010 Canadian census, more than a million Chinese and more than a half million South Asians lived in Canada.

E. The Canadian Economy

Not surprisingly, Canada and the Unites States are each other’s largest trading partner. More than 80 percent of Canadian exports go to the United States and 70 percent of imports to Canada come from the United States. Except for some natural-resource industries, most businesses are centered in Canadian cities to take advantage of the available labor force. Canada is rapidly moving toward a knowledge-based economy built on innovation and technology. Knowledge-intensive industries, such as biotechnology and information technology, are on the rise, and these are typically located in cities to facilitate partnering with universities and other researchers.

Although Canada is developing into a knowledge-based economy, the foundations of the Canadian economy have always been its abundant natural resources. Canada’s primary industries have traditionally been agriculture, fishing, mining, fuel/energy, and logging/forestry. Success in tapping these natural resources for their economic benefit allowed the country to double in population since 1960 while the economy has increased sevenfold. The primary industries now make up less than 10 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). Just as in the United States, the most dramatic structural change in the economy has been the rise of the service sector, which now employs about three-quarters of all Canadians and generates over 60 percent of the GDP. Canadian manufacturing has been a strong sector of the economy with close ties to United States and multinational corporations.

Canada’s economy is tightly tied to that of the United States. One of the best examples is how the Canadian economy fluctuates depending on whether the Canadian dollar is weak or strong compared with the US dollar. For example, in 2002, one American dollar was worth about $1.60 in Canada. For many years, the American dollar was much stronger on the world market than the Canadian dollar; therefore, Canadian goods and labor were less expensive for Americans than comparable US labor and goods. During the time of the weak Canadian dollar, many film and television industries moved to Canada to film television shows and movies, as it was less expensive to do so in Canada. Many popular television shows and movies have been shot in Canada, particularly in Toronto and Vancouver.

More recently, the value of the American dollar declined against other major currencies. The Canadian dollar remained strong, which meant that goods produced in Canada became much less affordable in the United States, causing the television and film industries to move back south of the border and Canadian exports to the United States to decline. In 2007, the Canadian dollar and the US dollar reached parity for the first time in thirty years. The two currencies continue to fluctuate with market values. As of mid-2017, one US dollar was worth about $1.30 Canadian.

As mentioned earlier, NAFTA , the 1994 trilateral agreement between Canada, the United States, and Mexico, was one of the most significant economic events in North American history. For Canada, the agreement has meant more secure, stable access to US and Mexican markets. The agreement eliminated many tariffs; opened previously protected sectors in agriculture, energy, textiles, and automotive trade; and set specific rules for trade in services such as finance, transportation, and telecommunications. Perhaps most importantly for Canada, the agreement set rules for settling trade disputes.

The United States continues to exert its powerful influence on many countries in the world, but perhaps on none so strongly as Canada. Because of the geographical proximity of the two countries and the fact that the vast majority of Canadians live very close the US border, speak English as their first language, and share a great number of cultural similarities, American trends tend to be adopted by Canadians. Canadians differentiate themselves from Americans in legal issues, laws, and health care. For example, Canada has a health care system, funded by the provinces with financial help from the federal government that provides free services to its citizens. Canadians often point to this difference as a one of the defining elements of their culture that is different from the United States.

Canada is a great consumer of American popular culture. Canadians listen to, watch, and read tremendous quantities of American music; television and movies; and news, books, and other literature—so much so that some Canadians believed Canadian culture was in danger of being extinguished. In response to these concerns, a law was passed and a watchdog agency created so that a certain percentage of all radio and television broadcasts emanating from Canadian radio and television stations had to originate in Canada or have significant Canadian content. Others were less worried about the impact of American pop culture on Canadian culture. This segment of the Canadian population felt that Canadians have long identified themselves in contrast to Americans; therefore, consuming American books, newspapers, television shows, and movies would only give Canadian a greater basis of comparison and thus strengthen the Canadian identity and perception of Canadian culture.

• Canada is a very large country with rich natural resources but a relatively small population that mostly lives in a narrow band in the southern part of the country.
• Canada’s English and French bilingualism is part of its British and French colonial past. The French culture is dominant in Quebec, where the population has considered seceding from Canada and becoming an independent country.
• Canada’s native population makes up less than 4 percent of the country’s population but represents a great deal of cultural and linguistic diversity.
• More than one in five Canadians is an immigrant, and most of the recent immigrants come from non-Western countries, especially those in Asia.

4.5 Regions of the United States and Canada

• Name the key characteristics of the regions of the United States and Canada.
• Understand the patterns of population growth or decline for the various regions.
• Determine which regions have significant minority groups and why.
• Examine the environmental and social costs to rapid growth in the West.
• Explain how physical geography has contributed to economic activities.

A. The Northeastern Core

The Northeastern Core includes the upper Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan); the mid-Atlantic states of Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and New Jersey plus northern Virginia; and the southern New England states of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. It also includes southern Ontario, Canada’s capital (Ottawa), and its largest city (Toronto). The physical environments of the Northeastern Core are quite diverse, including the northern Gulf-Atlantic Coastal Plain, the northern Appalachians, and the area surrounding the Great Lakes. This region, anchored by North America’s largest metropolis, New York, is the economic heart of the United States and Canada and home to more than a third of each country’s population. M egalopolis —the built-up area from Washington, DC, to Boston—is part of this region. The core region contains the old Manufacturing Belt , which was once the main manufacturing region for North America but suffered decline with the advent of the information age (hence the name change to Rust Belt ). The core region hosts the headquarters of countless corporations, banks, financial markets (e.g., Wall Street), colleges and universities (from community colleges to the Ivy League), cultural institutions (e.g., Broadway, world-class museums, dance and music organizations), and even global organizations such as the United Nations.

This large region includes geographic swaths of both wealth and economic suffering. Eight of the United States’ ten wealthiest counties are in this region, most of them in the Washington, DC, area, and a number of billionaires live in New York City. Meanwhile, cities such as Detroit and Cleveland have suffered from deindustrialization and have experienced a major population decline since the 1950s. Detroit, for instance, has lost 61 percent of its population since 1950, and the decline continues. The city decreased in population by 25 percent just between 2000 and 2010. While manufacturing is not dead in the Northeastern Core, heavy industry has been in long-term decline.

B. New England and the Canadian Maritimes

New England and the Canadian Maritimes overlap with the Northeastern Core because its major city—Boston—is considered the northern edge of Megalopolis. South of Boston, the low-lying states of New England were the center of colonial settlement in the region and were the birthplace of America’s Industrial Revolution. Southern New England began as an agricultural and fishing colony, and as industry developed in the nineteenth century, the region attracted European immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and elsewhere to work in its factories. Today the region has a more diverse economic base, including recreation and tourism, finance, telecommunications, and health care. The mountains of western New England have been particularly attractive for the development of ski resorts, and the coasts of New England are popular for summer vacationing.

As you move north from Boston, the terrain becomes more rugged and the soil less fertile. There are fewer economic reasons for people to live in northern New England, and the states of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine have always been less densely populated than the southern New England states. Maine is the least densely populated state in this region; about 90 percent of its land is forested, making it the most forested of the fifty United States. Maine’s leading economic activity is manufacturing, and the bulk of it is oriented around paper and other wood products.

Northern New England transitions to the even more rugged and remote uplands of the Canadian Maritimes: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador. The soil quality is quite poor, as glaciers removed most of it during the various ice ages. The region has a harsh climate and is removed from the major population centers of Canada and the eastern United States. The Maritime Provinces have always been oriented to the sea. Fishing and other sea-oriented businesses have historically been strong here, but in recent decades overfishing of the North Atlantic has caused a decline in the fishing economy. Tourism has been increasing as a source of revenue, especially in places such as Prince Edward Island, in which tourism is the dominant economic activity. Newfoundland and Labrador is Canada’s poorest province.

C. French Canada

West of the Canadian Maritimes lies the province of Quebec, the heart of which is the St. Lawrence River valley, a lowland separating the Appalachian Mountains to the south from the inhospitable Canadian Shield to the north. As explained earlier, France was the first European country to colonize the coastal regions of what is now Canada, the St. Lawrence River Valley, most of the land surrounding the Great Lakes, and the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys, south to the Gulf of Mexico. Although Great Britain obtained all that land from France in 1763 following the French and Indian War, enough French inhabitants occupied part of that territory that the region did not automatically become English speaking. The core of French Canada today is the St. Lawrence Valley from Montreal to the Atlantic coast and west of Montreal to Ottawa and north to the Hudson Bay. These French speakers, the descendants of the early French settlers, created a vibrant French-Canadian culture. About 21 percent of Canadians speak French as their mother tongue, including about 80 percent of Canadians living in the province of Quebec.

Throughout most of its history, the people of Quebec have been rural farmers, eking out a living on less-than-ideal land in a place with a short growing season. One unique characteristic of the farms in French Canada is their size and shape. Early on, the farms were laid out as long lots, maximizing the number of farms that would have access to the transportation artery—usually a river, but sometimes a road. Each farm was about ten times longer than it was wide and had a small access point to the river, some fertile riverfront land, and a woodlot at the rear of the farm. This land-use pattern was common throughout French Canada and can even be seen today in the United States in former French colonies such as Tennessee and Louisiana.

Since then, Quebec’s economy has developed to include a manufacturing sector (fueled by abundant hydroelectricity), tourism, and a variety of tertiary and quaternary industries. Montreal, Canada’s second-largest metropolitan area with 3.9 million residents, is the largest French-speaking city in the Western hemisphere. It developed as the region’s most important city in the mid-nineteenth century, as it controlled access through the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes. It became a diverse industrial center, with oil refineries, steel mills, flour and sugar refineries, and shop yards for railroad companies. Montreal attracted Anglophones (English speakers) as well as the local  Francophones , and at times in its history it has even had more English speakers than French speakers, despite being surrounded by a Francophone countryside. Most of northern Quebec is sparsely populated because of the lack of quality soil for agriculture, but a paper and pulp industry based on its forests has developed over the twentieth century, as well as hydroelectric power generation.

D. The American South

The South includes the entire southeastern portion of the United States from Kentucky south to Louisiana, east to Florida, and north to Virginia. The South consists of most of the Gulf-Atlantic Coastal Plain and the southern portion of the Appalachian Highlands.

Before the Civil War, the coastal plain was dedicated to plantation agriculture using African slave labor. Land not used for plantation crops such as tobacco, cotton, and rice was typically farmed by poor whites and later by poor blacks. Some were sharecroppers, while others farmed their own small plots, especially on the lesser-quality land in Appalachia. The South had little urbanization or industrialization at the time of the Civil War. Well into the twentieth century, the region remained rural and economically deprived.

Coal mining was a major source of employment in places such as West Virginia and eastern Kentucky for the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, but increased mechanization of mining methods, as well as new mining techniques such as mountaintop removal mining, decreased the number of miners needed, even as coal production increased.

The Appalachian South is perennially plagued by high unemployment, poverty, and difficult social conditions. Other areas of the rural South are also among the poorest in the nation, including the Mississippi Delta and the lower Mississippi River valley. Despite the continued swaths of poverty in the South, parts of the region have prospered in the past generation as Sun Belt migrants have moved to southern places such as Atlanta, Charlotte, Tampa, Miami, and dozens of smaller cities. This has fueled a period of urbanization and economic growth, and the newfound prosperity has helped integrate the South into the nation’s economy.

E. The Midwest and Great Plains

The center of the continent contains a relatively level agricultural region: the Midwest and the Great Plains, which includes the southern part of Canada’s Prairie Provinces. This land includes some of the most fertile agricultural land in the entire world and has been dubbed America’s Breadbasket . The climate gets progressively more arid as you move to the west within this region, and the type of agriculture changes with the decrease in precipitation. Closer to the Rocky Mountains, the land is typically used for raising cattle, but enormous grain farms are found where water is available (especially through irrigation). The water for irrigation comes from the continent’s largest aquifer, the  Ogallala Aquifer . Water is often pumped to the surface using a system called center pivot irrigation. The heart of the spring wheat belt is North Dakota, and the crop is also common in eastern Montana and in Canada’s Prairie Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Winter wheat is common in Kansas and surrounding states. Farther to the east, where precipitation is more abundant, is the Corn Belt , focused on Iowa and Illinois.

The dominant city in this region is Chicago, which developed as a market town for the livestock and grain produced in the surrounding states and was linked to its hinterland through a complex network of rail lines. In fact, nearly all the major cities of this region developed as places for the buying, selling, and processing agricultural products. Today the Midwest and the Great Plains remain the most important food-producing areas in North America, although as agriculture has become increasingly mechanized and farms have gotten larger, the number of farmers has decreased. This region, especially the Great Plains, is experiencing a period of long-term population decline and aging.

F. The American Southwest

The states of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona are considered the Southwest. The climate of the Southwest is more arid and receives a high amount of sunlight throughout the year. Desert conditions are integrated with higher elevations in the mountainous areas. Eastern Texas receives more rainfall from the Gulf of Mexico, and western Texas and the states of New Mexico and Arizona are quite arid and receive less rainfall. These conditions are more favorable to cattle ranching than to other agricultural activities. Large farming operations exist where water is available for irrigation. The warmer climate has been attractive for development and people emigrating from the colder regions of the north.

The Southwest has a strong Hispanic heritage and was part of Spain’s Mexican colony. According to the 2010 census, about 46 percent of New Mexico’s population was Hispanic or Latino, and in Texas and Arizona the figures were 37 percent and 30 percent, respectively.

The Southwest also has a strong Native American presence, especially in New Mexico and Arizona. Twenty-one federally recognized tribes with more than 250,000 people (five percent of the state’s population) live in Arizona, and their reservations and traditional communities make up more than one-fourth of the state’s land. The Navajo tribe is the largest in the United States, with more than 100,000 members in Arizona alone and others in surrounding states. The considerable Native American and Hispanic population in the Southwest means that non-Hispanic whites make up a minority of the population in New Mexico and Texas.

The three Southwestern states have been recipients of Sun Belt migrations over the past few decades, as people have moved to the Southwest for tertiary-sector jobs and for the region’s warm climate. The region is quite urbanized, and most of the new migrants are moving to cities. Three-fourths of Arizona’s population lives in the Phoenix or Tucson metropolitan areas. The most populous metropolitan area in the Southwest is Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas, with 6.4 million residents in 2010, making it the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States. The Houston metropolitan area is not far behind with 6.1 million residents. The economy of Texas used to be based on oil and natural gas, but it has since become more diversified. Residents of these cities work in high-tech manufacturing, health care, business, and information. One of the most famous high-tech industries in Texas is space: Houston is home to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, where astronauts and thousands of others work in the space industry.

G. The Mountain West

From the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra Nevada and Cascades and the Intermontane (literally, “between the mountains”) Basins and Plateaus in between, this part of North America has gone from the old Wild West to an area of rapid economic and population growth. The region encompasses western Colorado; western Wyoming; western Montana; Idaho; Nevada; Utah; the eastern portions of Washington, Oregon, and California; and the southern portion of the Canadian Rockies.

The population of the Mountain West is growing much faster than the population of the United States as a whole. For example, Nevada’s population grew 32.3 percent from 2000 to 2009, which is more than three times as much as the United States as a whole (9.1 percent). All US states in this region, except for Montana, grew at faster rates than the US average. What is fueling this growth? It is part of the larger pattern of Americans flocking to the Sun Belt, searching for an attractive climate and lifestyle. Jobs have been created in recreation (gambling, skiing), in high-tech firms, and in other tertiary sector industries. Many of the migrants come from southern California because the housing in the Mountain West is more affordable and the region is much less crowded. Nearly all the growth is occurring in urban and suburban areas.

However, the rapid growth of the West since 1990 has come at a cost. In some areas the large population is putting a strain on physical resources, such as water. Water is a hot-button political issue, particularly in the more arid states such as Nevada. Las Vegas, for example, is a desert city that gets 90 percent of its water from a Colorado River reservoir: Lake Mead. This water comes from snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains far to the east, and due to drought and high water demand, Lake Mead’s water level has been dropping. If current patterns persist, Las Vegas will have a water crisis soon. The water shortage is happening even though Las Vegas has managed to reduce per capita water usage by raising prices for water and creating incentives to remove grass lawns. Las Vegas recycles 94 percent of all sewage water, which is the highest rate in the United States.

H. The West Coast

The West Coast includes the coastal portions of California, Oregon, and Washington, plus the southwestern portion of British Columbia in Canada. This region is typically thought of as two subregions: California and the Pacific Northwest. The two areas are quite different from each other in terms of climate and economy. However, both areas are part of the so-called Ring of Fire that encircles the Pacific Ocean. The Ring of Fire is a zone of earthquakes and volcanoes that occur near where the Pacific tectonic plate meets the surrounding plates. In the United States, two areas of concern are the San Andreas Fault in California and Mount St. Helens in Washington. The 1906 earthquake that destroyed San Francisco was a result of activity on the San Andreas Fault , and scientists predict that strong earthquakes will reappear along the fault in the future. Thousands of small earthquakes occur along the fault every year. Mount St. Helens is a volcano in the Cascades that erupted in 1980, killing fifty-seven people and destroying hundreds of square miles of forest.

The West Coast represents a large population center a continent away from what we consider the North American core. Most of the region’s population is urban, and Los Angeles and its metropolitan area is by far the largest area of settlement. Twelve percent of the US population lives in California (thirty-nine million people), and the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area has over eighteen million people. Los Angeles is the second-largest US city after New York. Los Angeles is the quintessential automobile city. It developed into a major city in the mid-twentieth century at the time that automobile ownership had become common, and people who lived in the area tended to move to suburbs that were connected to each other by an extensive highway system. Los Angeles is a highly decentralized city, with more urban sprawl than cities in other parts of North America that formed during other transportation regimes.

The West Coast region is also famous for its agriculture. California’s Central Valley lies between the Coast Ranges to the west and the Sierra Nevada to the east and is among the most productive agricultural areas in the world. The irrigated farmland in the valley produces all types of nontropical crops and is the largest US producer of tomatoes, grapes, almonds, and other foods. When other parts of the country are still frozen in the winter months, the fields of the Central Valley are already producing bountiful harvests. California is also famous for its wine production, especially in Napa Valley near San Francisco.

Besides agriculture, the economic base of the West Coast is quite diverse and rich. If it were an independent country, California would be the world’s sixth-largest economy. Los Angeles is considered the capital of the US entertainment industry, and other major industries include aerospace, manufacturing, and foreign trade. The port of Los Angeles is the busiest in North America, receiving shipments of goods from China and other Asian countries. Silicon Valley, near San Francisco, is a key area for high-tech research and Internet commerce. The Pacific Northwest is home to major corporations such as Boeing (whose headquarters recently moved to Chicago), Microsoft, Nike, and other famous companies such as Starbucks, Amazon, REI, T-Mobile, Costco, and Eddie Bauer. One of the richest Americans, Bill Gates, lives near Seattle.

Across the border to the north, Vancouver is Canada’s third-largest metropolitan area with over two million residents. Vancouver is unlike any other city in North America. Nearly one-third of its residents are of Chinese origin, and more than half its population speaks a language other than English at home. Vancouver began as a logging town but developed into its position as the Asian gateway to Canada because of its port, the busiest in Canada. Vancouver is a popular location for the film industry and is sometimes dubbed as “Hollywood North.” It is also growing in the biotechnology and software industries.

I. The Far North

The Far North is the least densely populated of any region in North America due to its brutally cold winters, short growing season, and poor soils. It includes the boreal forests of the upper Great Lakes region and the Canadian Shield and the territory to the north of the tree line that extends beyond the Arctic Circle. Physically, this region is immense, including the state of Alaska plus most of Canada. The climate is similar to that of Russia: cold continental and arctic climates, arctic air masses swooping down from the north, and long winters. Most inhabitants of the northern portions of North America live in the forested areas rather than in the frozen Arctic.

Two groups of people live in this region. First are the native peoples who have always lived there. They are small in number and traditionally make a living by hunting and fishing. More recently, the native populations such as the Inuit and the First Nations in Canada subsist by combining wage employment with their traditional means of living off the land. American Indians or Alaskan natives make up about 15 percent of Alaska’s population, for a total of roughly 106,000 people. In Canada’s Northwest Territories, First Nations people make up just over half the population, but the total population is quite small—only about 41,000 in the entire territory. In Nunavut, the native population is about 85 percent of the total 30,000 residents, living in a territory the size of Western Europe.

The other residents are more recent immigrants who are there to exploit the land’s natural resources. The economy is dominated by the primary economic sector: forestry, oil and natural gas extraction, and mining. In the Canadian Shield, metallic ores such as copper, gold, nickel, silver, and uranium are found in the rocks and diamond mines are in operation, as are mines producing rare earth elements used in computer screens, electric car batteries, and computer hard drives. These elements include metals such as cerium, terbium, dysprosium, and neodymium. Alaska is an oil-producing state, and the decision of whether to open additional areas of Alaska’s Arctic to oil drilling remains controversial and uncertain.

• The economic core of North America has traditionally been in the US Northeast and its surrounding territory.
• As you move north from Boston into the rest of New England, the Canadian Maritimes, and Quebec, the economy is increasingly based on primary industries such as forestry and fishing.
• Agriculture and mining have been in decline in the South, while tertiary and quaternary industries have attracted new migrants to the region’s urban and suburban areas.
• The Midwest and the Great Plains make up North America’s breadbasket. The climate gets more arid as you move west, but thr-ough irrigation, agricultural productivity remains high.
• The Southwest is unique in its high proportion of Hispanic and Native American residents.
• The Mountain West is growing rapidly, especially in its urban and suburban areas. This is putting stress on the physical environment (particularly its water resources) and made the region susceptible to the real estate bubble collapse.
• The West Coast region is prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity, yet it is home to the second-largest metropolitan area in the United States and is known for its rich, diverse economic base.
• The far northern stretches of North America are sparsely populated, with an economy based on primary industries such as forestry and extraction. The Far North, both Canada and Alaska, is also known for its large native populations.

End-of-Chapter Summary

• The United States and Canada are two countries with a great deal in common: their large territories, their histories of European colonization, their immigrant populations, and their high standards of living.
• Both the United States and Canada are becoming less European as immigrants arrive from outside Europe. In the case of the United States, the largest group of immigrants is from Latin America. For Canada, the largest group of immigrants is from Asia.
• The United States and Canada are both countries with a small native population, although in Canada native people have achieved more self-representation than in the United States, especially since the creation of Nunavut.
• Quebec, the French-speaking heart of Canada, has struggled for years to maintain its cultural uniqueness without risking its economic well-being.
• Both countries are postindustrial, with service- and information-oriented economies. The United States is the world’s largest economy, and it has a history of spreading its culture, ideas, and military prowess around the globe.
• North America is made up of various regions with distinct cultural or physical features. Each region has majority and minority populations based on immigration or native heritage. Economic conditions vary from region to region. The Sun Belt is attracting an ever-growing number of information-based high-tech firms.

A Brief Introduction to World Regional Geography Copyright © by Steve Wolfe. All Rights Reserved.

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Exploration of North America

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 6, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009

The story of North American exploration spans an entire millennium and involves a wide array of European powers and uniquely American characters. It began with the Vikings’ brief stint in Newfoundland circa 1000 A.D. and continued through England’s colonization of the Atlantic coast in the 17th century, which laid the foundation for the United States of America. The centuries following the European arrivals would see the culmination of this effort, as Americans pushed westward across the continent, enticed by the lure of riches, open land and a desire to fulfill the nation’s manifest destiny .

The Vikings Discover the New World

The first attempt by Europeans to colonize the New World occurred around 1000 A.D. when the Vikings sailed from the British Isles to Greenland, established a colony and then moved on to Labrador, the Baffin Islands and finally Newfoundland. There they established a colony named Vineland (meaning fertile region) and from that base sailed along the coast of North America, observing the flora, fauna and native peoples. Inexplicably, Vineland was abandoned after only a few years. 

Did you know? Explorer Henry Hudson died when his crew mutinied and left Hudson, his son and seven crewmembers adrift in a small open boat in the Hudson Bay .

Although the Vikings never returned to America, other Europeans came to know of their accomplishments. Europe, however, was made up of many small principalities whose concerns were mainly local. Europeans may have been intrigued by the stories of the feared Vikings’ discovery of a “new world,” but they lacked the resources or the will to follow their path of exploration. Trade continued to revolve around the Mediterranean Sea, as it had for hundreds of years.

The Reformation, the Renaissance and New Trade Routes

Between 1000 and 1650, a series of interconnected developments occurred in Europe that provided the impetus for the exploration and subsequent colonization of America. These developments included the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Renaissance , the unification of small states into larger ones with centralized political power, the emergence of new technology in navigation and shipbuilding and the establishment of overland trade with the East and the accompanying transformation of the medieval economy.

The Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Church’s response in the Counter-Reformation marked the end of several centuries of gradual erosion of the power of the Catholic Church as well as the climax of internal attempts to reform the Church. Protestantism emphasized a personal relationship between each individual and God without the need for intercession by the institutional church. 

In the Renaissance, artists and writers such as Galileo, Machiavelli and Michelangelo adopted a view of life that stressed humans’ ability to change and control the world. Thus, the rise of Protestantism and the Counter-Reformation, along with the Renaissance, helped foster individualism and create a climate favorable to exploration.

At the same time, political centralization ended much of the squabbling and fighting among rival noble families and regions that had characterized the Middle Ages . With the decline of the political power and wealth of the Catholic Church, a few rulers gradually solidified their power. Portugal, Spain, France and England were transformed from small territories into nation-states with centralized authority in the hands of monarchs who were able to direct and finance overseas exploration.

As these religious and political changes were occurring, technological innovations in navigation set the stage for exploration. Bigger, faster ships and the invention of navigational devices such as the astrolabe and sextant made extended voyages possible.

A Faster Route to the East 

But the most powerful inducement to exploration was trade. Marco Polo’s famous journey to Cathay signaled Europe’s “discovery” of Chinese and Islamic civilizations. The Orient became a magnet to traders, and exotic products and wealth flowed into Europe. Those who benefited most were merchants who sat astride the great overland trade routes, especially the merchants of the Italian city-states of Genoa, Venice and Florence.

The newly unified states of the Atlantic–France, Spain, England and Portugal–and their ambitious monarchs were envious of the merchants and princes who dominated the land routes to the East. Moreover, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, war between European states and the Ottoman Empire greatly hampered Europe’s trade with the Orient. The desire to supplant the trade moguls, especially the Italians, and fear of the Ottoman Empire forced the Atlantic nations to search for a new route to the East.

Portugal: Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco de Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral

Portugal led the others into exploration. Encouraged by Prince Henry the Navigator, Portuguese seamen sailed southward along the African coast, seeking a water route to the East. They were also looking for a legendary king named Prester John who had supposedly built a Christian stronghold somewhere in northwestern Africa. Henry hoped to form an alliance with Prester John to fight the Muslims. 

During Henry’s lifetime the Portuguese learned much about the African coastal area. His school developed the quadrant, the cross-staff and the compass, made advances in cartography and designed and built highly maneuverable little ships known as caravels.

After Henry’s death, Portuguese interest in long-distance trade and expansion waned until King John II commissioned Bartolomeu Dias to find a water route to India in 1487. Dias sailed around the tip of Africa and into the Indian Ocean before his frightened crew forced him to give up the quest. A year later, Vasco da Gama succeeded in reaching India and returned to Portugal laden with jewels and spices. 

In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral discovered and claimed Brazil for Portugal, and other Portuguese captains established trading posts in the South China Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian Sea. These water routes to the East undercut the power of the Italian city-states, and Lisbon became Europe’s new trade capital.

Spain and Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus launched Spain’s imperial ambitions. Born in Genoa, Italy, around 1451, Columbus learned the art of navigation on voyages in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. At some point he probably read Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly’s early fifteenth-century work, Imago mundi, which argued that the East could be found by sailing west of the Azores for a few days. 

Columbus, hoping to make such a voyage, spent years seeking a sponsor and finally found one in Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain after they defeated the Moors and could turn their attention to other projects.

In August 1492, Columbus sailed west with his now famous ships, Niña, Pinta  and Santa María. After ten weeks he sighted an island in the Bahamas, which he named San Salvador. Thinking he had found islands near Japan, he sailed on until he reached Cuba (which he thought was mainland China) and later Haiti. 

Columbus returned to Spain with many products unknown to Europe–coconuts, tobacco, sweet corn, potatoes–and with tales of dark-skinned native peoples whom he called “Indians” because he assumed he had been sailing in the Indian Ocean.

Although Columbus found no gold or silver, he was hailed by Spain and much of Europe as the discoverer of d’Ailly’s western route to the East. John II of Portugal, however, believed Columbus had discovered islands in the Atlantic already claimed by Portugal and took the matter to Pope Alexander II. 

Twice the pope issued decrees supporting Spain’s claim to Columbus’s discoveries. But the territorial disputes between Portugal and Spain were not resolved until 1494 when they signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, which drew a line 370 leagues west of the Azores as the demarcation between the two empires.

Despite the treaty, controversy continued over what Columbus had found. He made three more voyages to America between 1494 and 1502, during which he explored Puerto Rico , the Virgin Islands, Jamaica, and Trinidad. Each time he returned more certain that he had reached the East. 

Subsequent explorations by others, however, persuaded most Europeans that Columbus had discovered a “New World.” Ironically, that New World was named for someone else. A German geographer, Martin Waldseemüller, accepted the claim of Amerigo Vespucci that he had landed on the American mainland before Columbus. In 1507 Waldseemüller published a book in which he named the new land “America.”

Spanish Explorers After Columbus

More Spanish expeditions followed. Juan Ponce de León  explored the coasts of Florida in 1513. Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and discovered the Pacific Ocean in the same year. 

Ferdinand Magellan’s  expedition (in the course of which he put down a mutiny and was later killed ) sailed around the tip of South America, across the Pacific to the Philippines, through the Indian Ocean and back to Europe around the southern tip of Africa between 1519 and 1522.

Two expeditions led directly to Spain’s emergence as sixteenth-century Europe’s wealthiest and most powerful nation. The first was headed by Hernán Cortés , who in 1519 led a small army of Spanish and Native Americans against the Aztec Empire  of Mexico . Completing the conquest in 1521, Cortés took control of the Aztecs’ fabulous gold and silver mines. 

Ten years later, an expedition under Francisco Pizarro overwhelmed the Inca Empire of Peru, securing for the Spaniards the great Inca silver mines of Potosí.

In 1535 and 1536, Pedro de Mendoza went as far as present-day Buenos Aires in Argentina, where he founded a colony. At the same time, Cabeza de Vaca  explored the North American Southwest, adding that region to Spain’s New World empire.

A few years later (1539-1542), Francisco Vásquez de Coronado  discovered the Grand Canyon and journeyed through much of the Southwest looking for gold and the legendary Seven Cities of Cíbola. About the same time, Hernando de Soto explored southeastern North America from Florida to the Mississippi River. By 1650, Spain’s empire was complete and fleets of ships were carrying the plunder back to Spain.

Religious Motivations

As European powers conquered the territories of the New World, they justified wars against Native Americans and the destruction of their cultures as a fulfillment of the European secular and religious vision of the New World. The idea of “America” antedated America’s discovery and even Viking exploration. 

That idea had two parts: one paradisiacal and utopian, the other savage and dangerous. Ancient tales described distant civilizations, usually to the west, where European-like peoples lived simple, virtuous lives without war, famine, disease or poverty. Such utopian visions were reinforced by religious notions. Early Christian Europeans had inherited from the Jews a powerful prophetic tradition that drew upon apocalyptic biblical texts in the books of Daniel, Isaiah and Revelations. They connected the Christianization of the world with the second coming of Christ. Such ideas led many Europeans (including Columbus) to believe it was God’s plan for Christians to convert pagans wherever they were found.

If secular and religious traditions evoked utopian visions of the New World, they also induced nightmares. The ancients described wonderful civilizations, but barbaric, evil ones as well. Moreover, late medieval Christianity inherited a rich tradition of hatred for non-Christians derived in part from the Crusaders' struggle to free the Holy Land and from warfare against the Moors.

European encounters with the New World were viewed in light of these preconceived notions. To plunder the New World of its treasures was acceptable because it was populated by pagans. To Christianize the pagans was necessary because it was part of God’s plan; to kill them was right because they were Satan’s warriors. 

France: Giovanni da Verrazano, Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain

While Spain was building its New World empire, France was also exploring the Americas. In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano was commissioned to locate a northwest passage around North America to India. He was followed in 1534 by Jacques Cartier , who explored the St. Lawrence River as far as present-day Montreal. 

In 1562, Jean Ribault headed an expedition that explored the St. Johns River area in Florida. His efforts were followed two years later by a second venture headed by René Goulaine de Laudonnière. But the Spanish soon pushed the French out of Florida, and thereafter, the French directed their efforts north and west. In 1608 Samuel de Champlain built a fort at Quebec and explored the area north to Port Royal and Nova Scotia and south to Cape Cod.

Unlike Spain’s empire, “New France” produced no caches of gold and silver. Instead, the French traded with inland tribes for furs and fished off the coast of Newfoundland. New France was sparsely populated by trappers and missionaries and dotted with military forts and trading posts. Although the French sought to colonize the area, the growth of settlements was stifled by inconsistent policies. 

Initially, France encouraged colonization by granting charters to fur-trading companies. Then, under Cardinal Richelieu, control of the empire was put in the hands of the government-sponsored Company of New France. The company, however, was not successful, and in 1663 the king took direct control of New France. Although more prosperous under this administration, the French empire failed to match the wealth of New Spain or the growth of neighboring British colonies.

The Netherlands: Henry Hudson Leads the Dutch

The Dutch were also engaged in the exploration of America. Formerly a Protestant province of Spain, the Netherlands was determined to become a commercial power and saw exploration as a means to that end. 

In 1609, Henry Hudson led an expedition to America for the Dutch East India Company and laid claim to the area along the Hudson River as far as present-day Albany. In 1614 the newly formed New Netherland Company obtained a grant from the Dutch government for the territory between New France and Virginia . About ten years later another trading company, the West India Company, settled groups of colonists on Manhattan Island and at Fort Orange. The Dutch also planted trading colonies in the West Indies.

England: John Cabot and Sir Walter Raleigh

In 1497 Henry VII of England sponsored an expedition to the New World headed by John Cabot , who explored a part of Newfoundland and reported an abundance of fish. But until Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the English showed little interest in exploration, being preoccupied with their European trade and establishing control over the British Isles. 

By the mid-sixteenth century, however, England had recognized the advantages of trade with the East, and in 1560 English merchants enlisted Martin Frobisher to search for a northwest passage to India. Between 1576 and 1578 Frobisher as well as John Davis explored along the Atlantic coast.

Thereafter, Queen Elizabeth granted charters to Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh to colonize America. Gilbert headed two trips to the New World. He landed on Newfoundland but was unable to carry out his intention of establishing military posts. A year later, Raleigh sent a company to explore territory he named Virginia after Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen,” and in 1585, he sponsored a second voyage, this time to explore the Chesapeake Bay region. By the seventeenth century, the English had taken the lead in colonizing North America, establishing settlements all along the Atlantic coast and in the West Indies.

Sweden and Denmark

Sweden and Denmark also succumbed to the attractions of America, although to a lesser extent. In 1638, the Swedish West India Company established a settlement on the Delaware River near present-day Wilmington called Fort Christina. This colony was short-lived, however, and was taken over by the Dutch in 1655. The king of Denmark chartered the Danish West India Company in 1671, and the Danes established colonies in St. Croix and other islands in the cluster of the Virgin Islands.

Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, a.d. 500-1600 (1971); John H. Parry, The Spanish Seaborne Empire (1966; 2nd ed., 1980); David B. Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481-1620, from the Bristol Voyages of the Fifteenth Century to the Pilgrim Settlement at Plymouth: The Exploration, Exploitation, and Trial-and-Error Colonization of North America by the English (1974).

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

North america: resources.

North America benefits greatly from its fertile soils, plentiful freshwater, oil and mineral deposits, and forests.

Earth Science, Geology, Engineering, Geography, Human Geography, Physical Geography

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North America, the third-largest continent , extends from the tiny Aleutian Islands in the northwest to the Isthmus of Panama in the south. North America's physical geography , environment and resources , and human geography can be considered separately. North America benefits greatly from its fertile soils , plentiful freshwater , oil and mineral deposits, and forests. With a strong domestic and export economy focused on this abundant array of natural resources , North America has become one of the most developed regions in the world. Agriculture From the freezing Arctic to the tropical jungles of Central America, North America enjoys more climate variation than any other continent. Almost every type of ecosystem is represented somewhere on the continent, from coral reefs in the Caribbean to the ice sheet in Greenland. These differences contribute to North America's variety of agricultural industries, which are often divided by climate zone: tropical zone, subtropical zone, cool temperate zone, and dry zone. In the tropical zones of North America, farmers harvest oranges, sugar cane, coffee, cocoa, and bananas. These crops grow on coastal plains and humid mountain slopes. Cotton and hemp are cultivated in the warmer and drier intermediate climate zone. These crops are important exports for Central American countries. Fruits, vegetables, cotton, and tobacco are predominant in the warm, subtropical zones of northern Mexico and the United States. Important agricultural areas in this zone include the Rio Grande Valley (citrus fruits) in the U.S. state of Texas and Mexico, California's Central Valley (fruits and vegetables), the Gulf Coastal Plain (vegetables), and the sandy valleys of the Appalachian Mountains (cotton and tobacco). These areas benefit from ample rain and warm air currents . Agriculture in North America's tropical and subtropical zones is threatened by monoculture . Monoculture is the practice of growing one crop in an area over a long period of time. Monoculture is a risky way of farming for two reasons. First, the soil may lose its nutrients . The nitrogen and phosphates in the soil do not have time to accumulate if the field is not allowed to be fallow, or rest. Planting other, less-intensive crops can also help the soil recover its natural nutrients. The second reason monoculture puts crops at risk is the possibility of disease. A disease affecting a single species of plant could devastate an entire crop, and the community's livelihood . Planting a variety of crops minimizes the risk of disease. Farmers and agribusinesses combat the threats of monoculture with the use of fertilizers and pesticides . Fertilizers replenish nutrients such as phosphates and nitrates to the soil. Pesticides target diseases brought by pests of a single plant. However, extensive use of fertilizers and pesticides can have a harmful impact on the environment. Runoff from agricultural fields can pollute rivers, lakes, and the ocean. The continent's cool temperate zones are ideal for hardy fruits, such as apples and peaches. Important agricultural areas in this climate include: the Finger Lakes region of New York in the U.S.; the Niagara Peninsula in the Canadian province of Ontario; the Columbia River basin in the U.S. state of Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia; and the valleys of the Appalachian Mountains. These areas benefit from excellent drainage and predictable, established frosts . The Dairy Belt, Corn Belt, and Wheat Belt are three agricultural areas in the continent's cool temperate zones. Dairy animals, including cows, goats, and sheep, feed on the hay and hardy small grains that thrive in New England and the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region along the Atlantic coast. This is the Dairy Belt. The Corn Belt, located between the Ohio River and the lower Missouri River, receives ample water and strong summer sun, ideal for corn and soybeans. West of the Corn Belt, the Wheat Belt stretches from the U.S. state of Kansas through the Canadian Prairie provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. This vast area of the Great Plains allows wheat to be cultivated in both winter and spring. Dry zones, common in the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico, are ideally suited for livestock ranching . Ranches with thousands of cattle are common in this region. Traditionally, livestock fed on locally grown fodder such as prairie grasses. However, irrigation for fruit and cotton farming has drained water supplies in the region. Native grasses cannot nourish the huge herds of livestock kept by ranchers. Cattle, sheep, hogs, and other livestock are less likely to graze than to eat corn-based feed. In fact, most of the corn grown in the Corn Belt is feeder corn used for livestock feed. Forestry Forestry is a major economic activity for much of North America. In the United States, the timber industry is strong in the Pacific Northwest, the Gulf states, and South Atlantic coastal plains. In Canada, forestry is a major industry in the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia. Forestry is the management, cultivation, and harvesting of trees and other vegetation in forests. In the Pacific Northwest, for instance, logging companies harvest cedar, fir, and spruce trees. Lumber from these trees is exported around the world for construction. Some of the continents largest paper mills are found in these temperate rain forests. In addition to paper, paper mills produce cardboard and fiberboard. Overharvesting of timber is a concern throughout North America. The reduction of forested land reduces biodiversity and threatens the longevity of the timber industry. The logging industry and local governments must work together to develop sustainable plans to harvest timber. The Mexican government, for example, created the ProArbol (pro-tree) campaign with the objectives of conserving and restoring forests. The campaign pledges to plant more than 250 million trees in urban and rural Mexico. ProArbol also works to ensure that Mexican forests positively influence biodiversity and human health.

Mining Extractive activities, such as mining and drilling, dominate the North American economy. Mining provides billions of dollars and millions of jobs throughout the continent. North America is a leading producer of coal , used in energy production; bauxite, used to create aluminum; iron and copper, both used in construction; and nickel, used to create steel , which North American companies export around the world. Gold and silver mines operate in the western part of the continent. Visitors to Crater of Diamonds State Park, a mine in the U.S. state of Arkansas, can search for their own diamonds. Extractive activities have been a major part of the economies of North America for hundreds of years. For example, gold mining helped spur development in the U.S. states of California and Alaska in the 19th century. Coal remains a primary industry for the U.S., and is often linked with states near the Appalachians. Coal is a type of sedimentary rock found deep underground, formed from the remains of ancient plants. When burned, coal is an excellent source of energy and is mostly used as fuel for electricity -generating power plants. Coal can be mined underground or in large, open pits. Mining is a dangerous industry. Coal is combustible , meaning it catches fire and explodes easily. Coal dust is toxic when breathed for long periods of time. Mines are vulnerable to collapse. Mining accidents have led companies and governments to pursue regulations that ensure greater safety for miners. In 2006, for instance, a coal mine in Sago, West Virginia, exploded. Thirteen miners were trapped hundreds of meters below ground. Only one miner survived. The so-called Sago mine disaster prompted calls for greater communication and safety technology to be employed at mining sites throughout North America. Coal mining can also have a negative impact on the environment. Mountaintop removal mining (MTR) has eliminated entire mountain ecosystems in the Appalachians. This type of mining also results in coal waste products being stored near public land. Improper storage of these waste products has damaged ecosystems and threatened human health. In 2008, a massive spill resulted in 1.1 billion gallons of coal slurry being released near Kingston, Tennessee. The spill damaged homes and entered into the Emory and Clinch Rivers, killing large fish populations and threatening water supplies. Drilling North America is home to vast deposits of oil and natural gas, which are drilled for energy and fuel. Oil and gas extraction are key elements of North Americas economy. The United States, Canada, and Mexico are among the world's top oil producers. The Athabasca tar sands , in the Canadian province of Alberta, are the world's largest reservoir of heavy crude oil. More than 20 national and international extraction projects are established in the Athabasca tar sands. The extraction and processing of crude oil, however, destroys the areas boreal forests and diverts an incredible volume of water from local rivers. The heavy crude oil from tar sands also emits 20 percent more carbon dioxide than emissions from light crude oil. Oil and gas extraction is the dominant industry around the Gulf and Arctic regions of North America. Mexico leads other North American countries as one of the top oil exporters in the world, largely because of its reserves in and around the Gulf. (Although both the United States and Canada produce more oil than Mexico, they also consume far more. Both countries are mostly importers, not exporters, of oil and natural gas.) Oil and natural gas, like coal, are nonrenewable resources . Global demand for fossil fuels has caused multinational corporations to drill in remote and dangerous regions. Scientists and engineers have developed more complex technology to search for deposits. Oil companies are forced to drill deeper and in more remote areas to extract these resources. The impact of these extractive activities is unknown. However, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010 has put into question the safety and sustainability of high-tech extractive industries. Deepwater Horizon was an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, capable of drilling to depths of 9,100 meters (30,000 feet). The rig exploded, killing 11 workers and causing a massive oil spill that took months to control. The impact on the environment was felt in the U.S. from Texas to Florida. The Built Environment North America's high level of economic development has promoted the construction of megacities, engineering marvels, and advanced infrastructure . A megacity is usually defined as an urban area with at least 10 million people. Mexico City, Mexico; New York, New York; and Los Angeles, California, are North America's megacities. With 21.2 million people, Mexico City is the largest metropolitan area in the Americas. Industrial growth caused a demographic boom during the last half-century, increasing the areas population from 3 million people in 1950 to its present numbers. As with many megacities, Mexico City is currently experiencing slower growth than in the past. The economy has shifted from manufacturing to the service industry , which includes tourism , education, banking, and sales. More people are moving out of the city itself and into the suburbs . Mexico City is built on a swampy series of islands in a valley surrounded by volcanoes . As the population boomed, the areas delicate geology led to problems with flooding, runoff, wastewater management, pollution , and earthquakes . Los Angeles, California, is one of the fastest-growing cities on the continent. L.A. is the second largest city in the United States, with 3.83 million people in 2008; the entire metropolitan area has more than 15 million people. The city is known as the Entertainment Capital of the World, with many motion picture, television, and music production studios established there. Los Angeles is also considered a majority-minority city, as its racial composition is less than 50 percent white. According to U.S. Census figures, Angelenos of Latino origin account for 48.4 percent of the population. Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is also considered one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world. More than 50 percent of its population was born outside of Canada. The city's diverse community, low crime rates, clean environment, and high standard of living make it one of the world's most livable cities. Engineering marvels have defined North America over the last century. The Panama Canal, completed in 1914, is one of the most important waterways in the world. Its 80-kilometer (50 mile) length connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Isthmus of Panama, making ship voyages dramatically shorter. Ships travelling from the west coast to the east coast of the United States, for example, cut their voyage by 8,000 nautical miles because they are not required to round Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America. The Hoover Dam, completed in 1936, is another of North America's engineering milestones. Located on the Colorado River on the border between the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada, the Hoover Dam creates Lake Mead, one of the largest manmade lakes in the world. The dam is used for flood control, electric power, irrigation, and water supplies. While it has contributed greatly to the development of the southwestern U.S., the Hoover Dam has also negatively impacted the Colorado River, its tributaries, and surrounding ecosystems. Construction of the dam basically eliminated the Colorado Delta ecosystem, as almost no water reaches the river's mouth . Communities in the Mexican state of Baja California are also prevented from using the river's water supplies. Cities and economic development have spurred North American engineers and architects to construct some of the world's most striking buildings. Completed in 1976, Toronto's CN Tower is the tallest freestanding structure in the Western Hemisphere, standing at 553 meters (1,815 feet). All major Canadian radio stations, as well as wireless service providers, use the CN Tower for transmission . North America's advanced infrastructure has allowed populations, services, and industries to prosper across the continent. With the first underground line opened in 1904, the New York City subway system is one of the oldest and most extensive public transportation systems in the world. It now has more than 450 stations, more than 354 kilometers (220 miles) of track, and delivered more than 1.575 billion rides in 2009. Other infrastructure systems transport goods. Mexico's state-owned petroleum company, Pemex, transports crude oil and natural gas through more than 453 pipelines spanning 4,667 kilometers (2,900 miles). Pemex is one of the largest companies in the world.

Population Density The continent contains 57 people per square kilometer (22 people per square mile).

Highest Elevation Denali, Alaska, United States (6,190 meters/20,310 feet)

Most Renewable Electricity Produced 96.7 percent of the power of Belize comes from hydropower and biomass.

Largest Urban Area 23.7 million people live in the metropolitan area of the New York City, New York, United States.

Largest Watershed The Mississippi River has an area of three million square kilometers (1.15 million square miles).

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Essay on North America

Students are often asked to write an essay on North America in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on North America

Introduction to north america.

North America is one of the seven continents on Earth. It’s the third largest continent and includes 23 countries, with the largest being Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

North America has diverse landscapes. From the icy Arctic in the north to the warm beaches of the Caribbean in the south, there’s a lot to see. The continent also has the Great Lakes, the largest freshwater system on Earth.

North America is home to a variety of wildlife. You can find grizzly bears, bald eagles, and bison here. It’s also home to unique species like the Florida manatee and the Canadian lynx.

North America is rich in culture. It’s a melting pot of traditions from Native Americans, Europeans, Africans, and Asians. This diversity is reflected in the food, music, and festivals across the continent.

250 Words Essay on North America

Geographical overview.

North America, the third largest continent, is a landmass of significant diversity and contrast. Located in the Northern Hemisphere, it is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the Pacific Ocean to the west, and the Arctic Ocean to the north.

Historical Context

The continent’s history is marked by the rise and fall of indigenous civilizations, European colonization, and the eventual emergence of independent nations. The indigenous populations, such as the Mayans, Aztecs, and various tribes of Native Americans, had rich and diverse cultures.

Political Landscape

North America comprises 23 countries with the United States, Canada, and Mexico being the most prominent. The political landscape is diverse, ranging from the world’s oldest constitutional democracy in the United States to socialist-leaning governments.

Economic Significance

Economically, North America is a powerhouse. The United States and Canada are among the world’s largest economies. The region is known for its technological innovation, natural resource exploitation, and agricultural productivity.

Cultural Diversity

North America is a melting pot of cultures, a product of extensive immigration. This cultural diversity is reflected in the languages spoken, religions practiced, and the culinary and artistic traditions.

Environmental Challenges

Despite its prosperity, North America faces significant environmental challenges, including climate change, deforestation, and pollution. These issues necessitate urgent attention and action for sustainable development.

In conclusion, North America, with its rich history, diverse cultures, and significant global influence, is a fascinating region. However, the continent also grapples with considerable challenges that call for innovative solutions.

500 Words Essay on North America

Introduction.

North America, the third largest continent in the world, is a fascinating region that is rich in history, cultural diversity, and ecological variety. It is a continent that has witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations, the struggle for independence, and the pursuit of economic prosperity.

North America is geographically diverse, stretching from the Arctic Circle in the north to the Tropic of Cancer in the south. It is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, the Pacific Ocean on the west, and the Arctic Ocean to the north. The continent’s topography is varied, with mountain ranges like the Rockies and the Appalachians, vast plains in the central region, and coastal lowlands. It is also home to the five Great Lakes, the largest freshwater system on Earth.

The history of North America is a tapestry of indigenous cultures, European colonization, and waves of immigration. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the continent was inhabited by diverse indigenous peoples with complex societies and cultures. The arrival of Europeans, particularly the Spanish, British, and French in the 15th and 16th centuries, marked the beginning of a period of colonization and conflict. This era was followed by revolutions and wars for independence in the 18th and 19th centuries, leading to the formation of modern nations.

Socio-Cultural Landscape

North America is marked by a rich cultural diversity, a product of its indigenous heritage and history of immigration. The United States and Canada, the two largest countries, are known for their multicultural societies. Languages, religions, and cultural practices from around the world find a home in North America, contributing to a vibrant socio-cultural landscape.

Economic Scenario

Economically, North America is one of the most developed regions in the world. The United States is the world’s largest economy, with a strong focus on technology, manufacturing, and services. Canada, with its abundant natural resources, has a mixed economy with a strong public sector. Mexico, the second largest economy in Latin America, has a growing manufacturing sector.

Despite its prosperity, North America faces significant environmental challenges. Climate change, deforestation, and pollution are pressing issues. The continent’s diverse ecosystems, from the Arctic tundra to the tropical rainforests, are under threat. However, there is a growing awareness and commitment to sustainable practices, with initiatives aimed at conservation and renewable energy gaining momentum.

In conclusion, North America, with its vast geographical expanse, historical richness, cultural diversity, economic strength, and environmental challenges, offers a unique study of the interplay between nature, history, and human activity. Understanding this continent is crucial to comprehending global dynamics and our role within them.

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Exploration and Colonization of the North America

In 1493, an explorer in Spanish service named Christopher Columbus changed the course of world history when he unexpectedly discovered two entirely new continents during an expedition to reach Asia by sailing West from Europe. Over the following decades, Spanish and Portuguese discoveries in Central and South America astounded residents of the Old World. New foodstuffs like tomatoes, chili peppers, chocolate, and corn brought from the Americas radically altered cuisines around the globe. The gold, silver and other precious metals looted from the civilizations encountered there transformed Spain, only recently united through the marriage of Isabelle of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, into one of the wealthiest kingdoms in Europe, fueling the Habsburg Dynasty’s increasingly lavish court life as well as their political and military ambitions. The desire to check Habsburg power and increase their own prestige in the process, therefore, became a prime motivation for Spain’s rivals to begin colonization efforts of their own in the New World, and while these rival powers grabbed whatever bits of the Caribbean and South America they could manage, much of their focus lay in exploring and settling the relatively unknown lands of North America.

Naturally, however, the first European explorers of the northern continent were still the Spanish, and while much of the lands they claimed remained unsettled for centuries, the writ of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (which also included Mexico and the Philippines) extended throughout much of the southern half of the modern United States, from Florida to the Pacific Coast. These early Spanish explorers, called conquistadors, privately financed their expeditions after acquiring royal authorization, and their objectives were much the same as their counterparts in Mesoamerica and Peru: finding gold to loot, souls to convert, and “devil-worshippers” to kill if they refused to do so. Their identities and outlook on the world was essentially medieval, based on religious and martial traditions developed over the years back home during the Reconquista, or effort to drive the Muslim Moors from the Iberian Peninsula, such as the hidalgo (meaning “Somebody”), the ideal landless aristocrat, which many of these explorers were, who comes into prosperity with plunder taken through force of arms against the infidels. According to historian Charles Hudson in his book Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun, these conquistadors “never doubted their own superiority over the native peoples they encountered in the New World. They saw themselves as specially favored people who were carrying out a divine mission,” and this attitude certainly affected Spanish behavior towards the “Indians.” Prominent conquistadors who launched expeditions into North America include Juan Ponce de Leon, the governor of Puerto Rico who gave the name La Florida to the peninsula that bears it today, Hernando de Soto, the first European to document and cross the Mississippi River before dying along its banks in 1541, and Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, one of the few survivors of a failed expedition, who wandered for eight years throughout the Southwestern United States before finally returning to Mexico City in 1536. He later chronicled his travels and the various peoples he encountered with a surprising amount of scholarly objectivity, and he is often referred to as one of the first modern anthropologists.

Private military expeditions were not the only tool of the Spanish colonial project, however. As one might expect from a society that so intensely identified with the Catholic Church, missionary efforts played an enormous role in the spread of Christianity throughout Latin America. Their methods varied wildly by monastic or priestly order, but in general, these new missions consisted of semi-autonomous communities centered around a town built along European models run by the clergy who provided religious education, often in local languages, in exchange for manual labor. Defenders of this system claimed that it was an effective barrier against indigenous exploitation, and many missions did clash with the colonial government over such issues, but it was certainly not free from abuse, and could often lead to rebellion if the clergy treated their charges too harshly or went too far in suppressing native cultural practices. Such was the case during the 1680 Pueblo Revolt that took place in modern-day New Mexico, where an alliance of Pueblo tribes rose up against the abuses of the missionaries and drove off more than 2,000 Spanish settlers from their homeland for more than a decade. Many mission communities survived, however, and today cities such as Pensacola, San Antonio and San Francisco all have their roots as either missionaries or Spanish military garrisons.

Though the Kingdom of France shared Spain’s Catholic faith, dynastic politics and constant military clashes over Italy had left them fierce rivals, and so King Francis I did not wait long to commission his own expeditions to North America after Spanish conquests on the mainland. Conflicts between both hostile natives and Spanish colonists prevented French adventurers from setting up permanent settlements throughout the 16th century, however, until Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in 1608 and claimed the surrounding area. Decades later, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle explored the Mississippi River Delta, claiming the entire river valley for France and naming it Louisiana after Louis XIV. In spite of the huge amount of territory claimed, settlement in French North America remained sparsely populated, requiring the support of allied Natives for both defense as well as securing sources for the fur trade and other commodities, for which they competed fiercely with both Europeans as well as the powerful Iroquois Confederacy the course of the 17th century during the so-called Beaver Wars. To maintain ties with their allies, as they lacked the capacity to subjugate them as the Spanish could in Latin America, the French also authorized missionary activities, typically Jesuit priests, to convert Indians to Catholicism. These priests faced strong competition with native religious traditions and were often blamed for misfortunes, particularly the European diseases that continued to ravage native communities, and so found little success with their official duties, but many acted effectively as explorers and diplomats. One such man, Father Jacques Marquette, was one of the first Europeans to travel through modern-day Illinois and Michigan, for example. Explorers from the Dutch Republic also settled in North America around this time, most famously founding the city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later New York City, as well as other settlements along the Hudson River Valley. For the Dutch, exploration in the New World coincided with their War of Independence against Habsburg Spain, and so as a relatively new state, colonization initiatives were not just a source of enrichment, but also to mark its legitimacy to imperial rivals. Like the French, the Dutch mainly sought to profit from the fur trade, and though they were far less successful in this regard, their provincial capital of New Amsterdam proved to be far better located geographically than Quebec, giving it better access to markets in across the Caribbean and spurring economic development that continued well after its annexation by England.

Many other European states also attempted to found colonies in the New World during the 17th century, including Sweden in Delaware as well as Russia, which actually arrived in Alaska from the East, but by far the most successful to settle North America proved to be England, another Protestant rival of Spain, which founded colonies across the Atlantic coast. The first successful English expedition to North America, which founded the tiny settlement of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, originally sought only to find precious metals and other valuable materials that could allow its main patron, the Virginia Company of London, to make a return on their investment. As such, many of the colonists consisted mostly of gentry and artisans with very few experienced farmers, and there were no women amongst them until the next year. Furthermore, relations with the neighboring Powhatan Confederacy were icy at the best of times, and the location the settlers had chosen for their new home was swampy and mosquito-ridden, making agriculture even more difficult and disease a constant threat. These combined factors did make a recipe for success, and for their first few years the settlers faced one unmitigated disaster after another. Fortunes finally turned around when settler John Rolfe convinced his fellow colonists to switch emphasis from exporting precious metals to cash crops, starting with tobacco in 1613. This success in Virginia was soon repeated by future colonies in the Chesapeake and southern Atlantic Coast but also brought the first African slaves to British North America in 1619. Far to the north, however, English colonies took on a rather different character. Starting with the famous landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock, the colonies of New England characterized themselves not economic ventures but places of refuge, specifically for Separatists and Puritan dissenters who believed that the Church of England had not gone far enough in upholding the ideals of the Protestant Reformation, and so left Europe to create their vision of an ideal Christian community in the New World, formally organized as the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629. As in Jamestown, the early settlers in New England faced a myriad of challenges, with many dying off in the first few years and others later deciding that living amidst what they saw as a “savage wilderness” was simply too much of a struggle and to return home, but those who remained continued to persevere and grow and attract further immigrants from Europe, though the colony continued to struggle with civil and external instability. As in Virginia, New England settlers did not seek close connections with surrounding Native American groups. Though they adopted many of their survival techniques, Massachusetts residents made very little official overtures to their indigenous neighbors, believing that their constant displays of English civility and Christian virtue, “A City Upon a Hill” as colony founder John Winthrop put it, could naturally win them over in contrast to Spanish tyranny. This failed to materialize, however, and tensions between natives and colonists remained high before exploding into armed conflicts, such as during King Philips’ War of 1675. The colony’s theocratic government also caused a great deal of internal strife over ideas of religious liberty, as dissenters from the official Puritan theology could face exile, which sometimes led to the founding of several neighboring colonies, or even death, culminating in the infamous Witch Trials of 1692.

Towards the end of the 17th century, there was little doubt in regards to Britain’s success in colonizing North America. Though they started much later than their imperial rivals and had claimed far less territory than either Spain or France, the settlements they did create were far more developed and populous than their neighbors, giving Britain a distinct edge in any future struggles over control of the new continent

Further Reading

• Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the South’s Ancient Chiefdoms  By: Charles Hudson
• Gateways to Empire: Quebec and New Amsterdam to 1664  By: Daniel J. Weeks
• The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity  By: Jill Lepore.

Federalists, War Hawks & The War of 1812

Embargos: Economic Warfare on the Eve of the War of 1812

Fighting for Our Battlefields, and Our Planet

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United States of America Essay

The history of america.

The story of the United States is based on either the Native people’s prehistory or the 1492 voyages of Christopher Columbus to the land. USA or the United States, as it is sometimes called, is a federal republic made up of a federal district and fifty states. Native people, whose first appearance in the region was at North America, were the indigenous people in the country.

This group of people would compose of a number of distinct American ethnic communities and was called by controversial titles that were based on European language terminologies. The Voyages of Christopher Columbus, on the other hand, refers to the speculative journey of an Italian navigator and explorer by the name Christopher Columbus, across the Atlantic Ocean.

Columbus’s boat voyages were a successful exploration story, since they would lead to significant discoveries of the land. The discoveries of Columbus explorations contributed to general European awareness of the continent of America, thus necessitating its colonization by the Great Britain. This colonization begun at around 1600, and would go on for about 15 decades before the onset of the revolution war in 1775.

The first batch of Europeans to arrive in the region would languish alone for many years before a new stronger group of British settlers finally made their way into the region towards the end of the 17th century. These new settlers were indeed the first category of immigrants to bring the idea of commercial agriculture in the region, with tobacco and rice being the first agricultural products to be introduced.

The 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries would see a great number of immigrants flow into the region, with the intention of making good use of the abundant opportunities and resources that were available. Apart from the impact of these varied opportunities, many significant aspects in the American history such as industrialization and formation of the initial states would also take place in the course of this period, making America one of the most developed continents in the world those times(Wendell,2005).

However, the differences in cultural aspects arising from the diverse communities in the region would often lead to serious ethnic violence, social disruptions, and political tensions among the communities over the centuries. In fact, these pressures played a significant role in the facilitation of the American war of independence or simply the revolution war in 1775.

The American Revolution was an open confrontation that involved the Great Britain on one side, and the united colonies together with other European immigrants on the other side. The revolution would come as a result of heightening restrictions which had been placed upon the colonies by the Great Britain.

The confrontation is also said to have started as a result of disagreements over the manner in which the Natives were treated by their British colonizers, and the way they thought it was better for them to be treated. Some of these disagreements came by as a result of matters regarding taxations which the colonies believed were conducted unfairly.

While the Americans thought that their rights as the owners of the land were being trodden upon by the Europeans, particularly the British, the Great Britain would claim that it was their right to treat the colonies in every manner that suited the crown. These events would later lead to the British defeat by the Americans. This would come following the support of the latter by the French and other immigrants who had settled in the region.

The outcomes of this historic war eventually granted Americans their freedom from the colonizers. This historic achievement was realized on July 4, 1776, and the declaration of Independence would be signed officially two days later. This marked a new beginning for the Americans, since the thirteen states which had previously being under the harsh rule and domination of Great Britain for many centuries were now free to come together to establish an autonomous government.

The states could now form their own way of leadership, and be able to come up with own laws that would be suitable for them in all aspects. 37 more states were formed in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries increasing the number of states to 50 from the previous 13, thus giving rise to modern America.

1780s would see key nationalists from the 13 states come together to form a new constitution to serve as a foundation for this new nation that was too fragile to withstand any form of pressure that was likely to arise. The new constitution paved way for a stronger government with a powerful president and new laws.

George Washington, a renowned political figure who had played an active role in the revolutionary war was elected the first president of the country, under the new constitution in 1789. Ever since then, America has gone through smooth and tough, wars and treaties, and good and bad times, to emerge not only as one of the most developed countries in the world, but also as a global superpower. The United States has had 44 presidents so far, with Barack Obama being the current occupant of the Whitehouse.

Significant Events in the Country’s Life

The American life is marked by many significant events which include wars and diseases. Concerning wars, there have been all sorts of warring events in the country’s history. This would range from domestic conflicts to international conflicts where the Americans have been involved in conflicts with combatants from other countries.

Some of the well-known conflicts involving the Americans had taken place in the colonial times, while others would occur just after the independence and the years to follow. The King Philip’s War, which took place between July 1675 and August 1676, was among the first wars involving the Americans. This was followed by a conflict involving France and the English colonies, a confrontation that was known as King William’s War between 1689 and 1697.

There was also the King George’s war which took place between 1744 and 1748. This was followed closely by the French and Indian War involving the Great Britain and French colonies from 1756 to 1763. The Cherokee War between 1759 and 1761 would pave way for the Revolution War that was fought for eight consecutive years starting from the year 1775.

The Post-independence wars involving the US included Franco-American Naval War of 1798, Barbary Wars, War of 1812, Creek War, Mexican-American War, Spanish-American War, and the U.S. Civil War. Some of the major wars in the American history would include the Great War, World War II, the Cold War, Vietnam War, Invasion of Panama by the US, Persian Gulf War, the Invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and the US disarmament war on Iraq.

The Iraq war which begun in 2003 and took not less than five years to end, is arguably one of the worst wars that have involved the Americans recently.

Apart from these notable wars and conflicts, America has also experienced a number of diseases. As it would be observed, Native Americans have been victims to various health concerns and diseases throughout history.

Most of these diseases, however, are said to have resulted from the interactions of the Europeans when they first invaded the American territories way back in 1600 and the years to follow. The most notable diseases and health concerns arising from these foreign invasions would include, but were not limited to, smallpox, measles, cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, chicken pox, scarlet fever, influenza, whooping cough, yellow fever, bilious disorder, and sexually transmitted diseases (Matthew & Cliff, 2004).

Most of these diseases, however, occurred as sweeping epidemics which resulted to massive deaths, thus causing serious destruction to the affected communities. Some of these epidemics are seen as significant events in the country’s life, owing to their serious implications on people’s lives.

Even though the effects of these early diseases have declined tremendously over the past several decades, probably due to the current advancements in matters of health, a new batch of more serious ailments has sprouted in the contemporary world. These contemporary diseases, which have continued to place a heavy burden on the American economy, would include HIV/AIDS, malaria, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and liver cirrhosis, among others.

Recent Worth Noting Events

Apart from the wars and diseases that have affected the American since prehistoric times, there are also other worth noting events that have rocked the country. These include devastating events such as acts of terror, natural calamities or disasters, and incidents of mass shooting that have occurred in the country‘s history. As it would be observed, America has been a common target for many Islamic terror attacks.

Some of these attacks would result to loss of many innocent lives across the country whenever they did occur. Among these attacks, the events of September 11 are said to be the most devastating acts of terrorism to have ever happened in the country’s history. This was an act of terror involving Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacking four passenger flights in the U.S. and steering them into strategic points in Washington DC, leading to the deaths of nearly 3000 Americans and injuries of more than 1000.

Apart from terrorism events, mass shooting incidents have also become a norm in the United States recently. Most of these incidents are said to have occurred in entertainment zones, restaurants, and learning institutions, among other places. According to police sources in the U.S., more than 30 mass shooting incidents have occurred in the country in the last three decades alone .

The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University incident, where an undergraduate student by the name of Cho shot and killed 32 fellow students is a worth noting event here. The April 2007 shooting, which is said to be the worst incident of mass shooting ever in the country’s history, has raised a lot of concern on the controversial issue of gun control in the country.

The McDonald’s massacre of July, 1984 is also another significant event. In this particular incident, James Huberty had invaded the Californian restaurant and opened fire on everybody who was inside. Only 19 out of the forty people who were said to have been shot in this incident had survived the ordeal, but with serious injuries.

US Government Structure

The current American government structure is divided into three major branches which include the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judiciary. Normally, the government is headed by the US president, who shares his authority and powers with the judiciary system and the Congress. Theirs being a Federal Republic, Americans do recognize the Constitution as the Supreme law which governs them.

Following is a simple diagram showing the current government structure of USA.

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party are the two major political parties in the states. Each of these parties has tried to exercise outstanding credibility and performance in governance affairs. Democratic is currently the ruling party, with president Obama being the 15th Democrat to occupy the Whitehouse as the 44th president of the United States. With a population of over 300 million people, the U.S. is arguably among the high-ranking countries in the world in terms of voter turnout every time there is an election.

However, the voter turn out in the country has never been constant, but it keeps on rising and dropping every now and then. According to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, the recent voter turnout in the country stood at 57.5 percent of the total number of people who were eligible to vote. This rate, however, was a bit lower compared to the 2008 and 2004 general elections where percentages of 62.3 and 60.4, respectively, were observed.

Cases of Corruption in the US

The U.S., just like any other country in the world, has witnessed many cases of public corruption in its history. There has been a case of corruption in almost every administration that has governed the Federal Republic of the United States.

Some of the past administrations that have been associated with major corruption scandals in the country’s history would include the governments of Reagan, Clinton, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, George W. Bush, Kennedy, Carter, and George H.W. Bush. Of all the vast corruption scandals witnessed under the above administrations, the corruption case of William Jefferson is a worth noting scandal. This incident had taken place in the era of President George W.

Bush, and is one of the most recent corruption cases to have rocked the U.S. The fact that the case involved a Congressman was not the only reason that would make it one of the most significant corruption scandals in the country’s history, but also the fact that the 5-year investigation on the case, which had started on mid 2005 would reveal more than enough evidence to convict Jefferson (Nicholls et al., 2011).

This would see Jefferson being convicted of 11 accounts of corruption in August 2009, and getting a 13-year sentence. In this regard, Jefferson went into history as the first congressman to get the longest jail sentence on accounts of corruption and bribery.

Country Indicators and Statistics

As it would be observed, the major indicators of the United States are based on aspects of human development, climate and environmental matters, socioeconomic aspects, and information and communication technology matters, among other aspects.

The levels of Human Development in the US are assessed by bringing together the indicators of income, life expectancy and attainment of education. However, the levels of income would vary from state to state. The current Median Income of the households is said to be $45,019 per annum.

The life expectancy at birth in the US currently ranges between 77 years and 80 years for both male and women. Educational attainment for all ages, sex, race, and gender has increased significantly in the last several years. Based on the above indicators, it is patently clear that all avenues of human development in the country have improved greatly over the years, thus paving way for even better achievements as far as the country’s future economy is concerned.

Climatic indicators are also widely used in the U.S. to determine expected weather patterns. Most of these climatic indicators are aimed at assessing the key elements of weather that are likely to be observed in the country, such as weather patterns, greenhouse gases, and ecosystems.

Current economic indicators have shown USA as one of the most powerful economies globally. This great achievement, however, can be based on the behavior of the financial market as it is gauged using various economic indicators. Some of the common economic indicators that have continued to play a significant role in the United States include, but are not limited to, Gross Domestic Product, Inflation, and unemployment.

These indicators have proved to be effective in helping the Federal Reserve make the necessary decisions and plans in regard with the country’s economy. The current Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the country is estimated to be $15.7 trillion. This actually stands as the largest national economy globally.

This is slightly higher compared with previous rankings, thus indicating a significant advancement in the job and business sectors. Currently, the U.S. inflation rate is recorded at 1.1 percent, and this is a significant drop compared to previous records which had stood at a higher mark. The unemployment rate in the US has also dropped to 7.5 percent this year from last year’s rate which stood at 7.6 percent.

Population Statistics

Currently, United States stands as the third most populous country in the world, with an approximate of about 315 million people. According to statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, the country’s population has been growing steadily since prehistoric times, and it was in the year 2006 when the mark of 300 million was eventually reached.

This is a massive growth, considering the fact that the country had a population of only 350 people way back in 1610, when the first census was conducted on Native Americans. United States has a total area of 3.79 sq miles, and in that case, its population density stands at around 33.9 people per sq.km. Having a growth rate of nearly 1 percent, which is considered to be higher than that of any other developed nation in the world, the country’s population is projected to increase abundantly in the near future.

The total fertility rate in the United States stands slightly below the replacement value at 2.09. This, however, is a bit more higher compared to that of other developed countries in the world. The death rate in the country is observed to have dropped significantly in the past few years. In fact, this is one of the key factors which have contributed to the high growth rate witnessed in the country today.

Based on the current demographical data, the death rate stands at 8.4 deaths per every 1,000 population. The infant mortality rate normally constitutes the largest percentage of the overall number of deaths occurring in the country. Currently, the infant mortality rate in the U.S. stands at around 6.04 deaths per 1000 live births.

Most of these infant deaths are said to occur as a result of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and serious birth defects, among other causes. Even though the infant mortality rate is observed to have started declining in recent years after leveling off for quite sometime, it still remains a bit higher than that of many other countries in the world.

Armed forces, Conventional Weapon Holdings and Military Activities

Generally, the U.S. armed forces are comprised of five key branches which include the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the US Air force. The president, who is also the Commander-in-Chief, is the military’s overall head assisted by a federal executive department and the Defense Secretary, among other key units in the government.

All these units are entrusted with the responsibility of overseeing the complex operations of the armed forces in the whole country. Members of the U.S. armed forces are entitled to a variety of duties and assignments, as stated in the Constitution. Even though personnel from different units of the U.S. armed forces can perform similar tasks in most cases, their duties would tend to vary greatly sometimes, depending on their departments or units.

The typical duties of military personnel in the U.S. armed forces would include safeguarding the country from both domestic and external attacks, responding to matters of emergency in the country, helping in undertaking development projects, and assisting in carrying out the outstanding mission of the government in other countries through the U.S. foreign policy.

The U.S. armed forces are ranked among the best trained fighting forces globally. Moreover, they have also gained outstanding reputation and recognition from allover the world, for being in possession of the most sophisticated war weapons that have ever been introduced into the world.

These achievements have brought much glory and honor to the American fighting forces. Ever since their establishment way back in 1775, the U.S. forces have taken part in many military activities inside and outside the country (Ploch, 2010). Most of these involvements have been in the many warring events involving the Americans that would take place after the declaration of independence in 1774. The prevailing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are good examples here.

Apart from the wars, the U.S. armed forces have also taken part in other special missions outside the country, some of which are noteworthy events in the country’s history. A good example of the special activities in which the U.S. military forces have continued to take part is the UN peacekeeping mission of enforcing peace in war-stricken regions in the world. The American military forces have also played a crucial role in responding to natural disasters and events of terrorism in the world.

One important aspect which the U.S. enjoys out of their economic power and stability is their status as the strongest military power in the world. This outstanding status has been confirmed by previous war events which had involved the Americans, such as the Great War and the Spanish-American War, among others.

America’s status as a strong military and economic power would come after the Second World War, when it eventually became a global superpower. Today, the U.S. stands as the country with the highest number of military personnel in the world, constituting of volunteers and conscripted service men, both of whom are entitled to salaries and allowances.

When it comes to holding of conventional weapons, the U.S. military forces would come second to none in the whole world. As a matter of fact, the deadliest conventional war machines and equipment used in the world can be found in the U.S. armed forces arsenal. These deadly weapons include laser-guided bombs, the bunker booster bomb, anti-personnel mines, the AC-130 aerial gunship, and the .50-caliber sniper rifle, among others.

Education Structure

Education is compulsory for every child in the United States, just like in any other nation that values the future of its coming generations. The system of education in the U.S. is almost similar to that of any other country in the world. Basically, the system is divided into three major levels which include elementary school, middle school, and secondary school.

The educational system constitutes of twelve study grades which are achievable over twelve full years of primary and post-primary education in high school, before one becomes eligible for admission in college or university for further studies.

Early childhood is the first level of the education system in the United States. This normally comprises of toddler, preschool, and pre-kindergarten. The elementary school, which constitutes of kindergarten as the lowest level and five years of study in the primary school, comes next.

Learners are then taken through the middle school level where they undertake grades 6, 7, and 8, before proceeding to high school. After graduating with high school diplomas, they can then enroll for post-secondary education which comprises of tertiary education, vocational education, and graduate education. Adult education, which is not very common in the country, also falls under this category.

The following figure illustrates the education structure in the U.S.

Economic and Trade Activity

Apart from being the biggest economy in the world, America is ranked among the wealthiest nations in the world today. Moreover, the country enjoys abundant natural resources, integrated communication facilities, and well-developed infrastructure, among other modern aspects that are critical in boosting a country’s productivity and economy.

All these opportunities have continued to play a crucial role in promoting the country’s development and prosperity in terms of trade and economic affairs. Over the years, America has established strong trade ties with other countries in the world, thus playing a key role in shaping the global economy. According to Hanson (1996), the U.S. has proved to be less vulnerable to anything which threatens to interfere with its incredible advancement in various sectors of the economy.

America has been a major trade partner in the world for many years now and this progress in trade affairs has made the nation a global leader in matters of trade. Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) have become the most convenient way of opening up the country’s abundant exports to foreign markets.

More importantly, these agreements have also proved to be more important in giving the country an opportunity to import equipment and resources freely from their many trade partners around the world. Currently, the country has engaged in numerous trade agreements with other countries in the world. Some of the major free trade agreements involving the U.S. include North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Australia-U.S.

Trade Agreement of 2004, Singapore-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, Chile-United States Free Trade Agreement, Morocco-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, Peru-United States Free Trade Agreement, and Oman-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, among others. Currently, the country has engaged in negotiations with other nations in a bid to open more multilateral and bilateral free trade agreements across the world.

Despite the current economic nightmares arising from the most recent economic crisis, America has maintained a stronger economic health. If anything, the country’s outstanding strength in business has played a crucial role in enabling it to survive these economic setbacks. This achievement, however, has also been enhanced by the efforts of the U.S. government and other important sectors of the economy.

For instance, both public and private sectors in the country have constantly come together to exert considerable efforts that would be necessary in key areas of the economy. The government is the engine of the country’s economic growth, and for that reason, America’s potential economic benefits out of trade affairs are likely to remain inexhaustible for long.

Some of the ways by which the government influences economic activities in the country is through exertion of leverages on some key sectors of the economy and through implementation of antitrust laws aimed at preventing firms from engaging in unethical business practices.

Membership of international organizations

Apart from the Free Trade Agreements, the United States also takes part in numerous international organizations in the world. Some of the major international organizations in which the country participates include the World Trade Organization (WTO), World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations (UN), International Trade Union Confederation, International Monetary Fund (IMF), International Criminal Court (ICC), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Group of Seven (G7), International Olympic Committee (IOC), and African Development Bank Group, just to mention but a few.

Human Rights

Human rights in the U.S. are just as important as they are in any other nation in the world, and for that reason, they are legally protected by the law (Stephens, 2008). The organization of the human rights in the country dates back more than two centuries ago, when Anthony Benezet introduced the first human right standards in regard with the abolishment of slavery.

This makes America a leader in the creation of an international system which recognizes, promotes, and protects the rights of people in various sectors of life. Ever since after the independence, when the first human right requirements were introduced in the country, America has shown great consistence in recognizing and protecting the rights of all its citizens and other people in the world, regardless of their race, color, gender, and national identity, among other aspects.

To prove that they are the premier promoter of these standards in the contemporary world, Americans have expressed support to some standard international human rights through ratification of treaties. Some of the key areas of concern upon which the U.S. human rights are based would include, but are not limited to, legal aspects, equality issues, labor rights, freedoms, justice system, and health care.

Major Societal Trends

As it would be observed, modern societies in the U.S are characterized by a number of societal trends. One of the most common trends here, which has affected nearly all groups in the country, is the obsession with modern technology. For instance, Americans, just like people from other developed nations, have become big fans of the social media through interactive sites such as Facebook, you tube and twitter.

Waking up to conservative life is another significant trend which defines the current American society. It is only at this age when you will find more grown-ups in America living with their guardians, compared with the past. As a matter of fact, the percentage of parents living with their adult children has increased tremendous in the past few years.

On the same note, current generations are even more family-centric compared with their predecessors. This, however, explains the reason as to why current generations are bearing more children, compared with their predecessors.

America is also experiencing a big demographic shift presently than before, probably as a result of the rapid wave of globalization which is taking place in every part of the country, among other significant factors in the society. Efficient access to goods and services has also become a norm in the U.S. as a result of current advances in technology. Anxiety has also emerged as another common trend among the American societies nowadays.

Previous acts of terrorism, particularly the events of September 11, have left many citizens in the country slightly rattled. This has triggered feelings of fear and anxiety among some American citizens who have felt that the country’s security against terrorism is not fully guaranteed. Other major societal trends in the U.S. would include bulging business opportunities, innovations, and invention of sophisticated aspects of technology in all sectors.

State of Technology

Being a country associated with abundant opportunities and resources, America has over the time emerged as the most advanced nation in the world in matters of technology. These aspects have played a critical role in helping to facilitate the early industrial and technological development in the country.

For the past one century or so, America as a country has been integral in the development of many award-winning technology products in the world. The country has been associated with a series of inventions and innovations, especially in the ICT sector which has continued to serve as a platform for other major developments in the world. Based on these observations, there is no doubt that America has excelled in matters of technology.

Environmental record

The management of environmental matters has never been easy for any country in the world. However, the United States has made progressive efforts in ensuring that current and future generations are spared the implications of a wasted environment which could result from environmental pollution and air pollution.

As it would be observed, the U.S. has maintained a good environmental record, possibly through their strong environmental policy which is enforced by the federal government. 1960s and 1970s are significant years in America’s history, since they mark a time when important laws on the environment were passed by the Congress. It is worth noting here that it was also in the course of this time when the Environmental Protection Policy was first introduced in the country to help address environmental matters more efficiently.

On this note, the United States is said to be at the fore-front in the fight against pollution of air and the environment. More importantly, the country has also adopted the idea of going green in various sectors of its vast economy, thus becoming the first country in the world to show serious concerns in the fight against the devastating issue of global warming, among other serious climatic conditions affecting the global populations today.

Hanson, G. (1996). Economic integration, intra-industry trade, and frontier regions. European Economic Review, 40 (3), 941-949.

Matthew, R., & Cliff, D. (2004). Impact of infectious diseases on war. Infectious Disease Clinics of North America, 18 (2), 341-345.

Nicholls, C., Daniel, T., Bacarese, A., & Hatchard, J. (2011). Corruption and misuse of public office. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Ploch, L. (2010). Africa Command: US strategic interests and the role of the US military in Africa . Berby, PA: Diane Publishing.

Stephens, B. (2008). International human rights litigation in US courts . Leiden: Brill Publishers.

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Why Poverty Persists in America

A Pulitzer Prize-winning sociologist offers a new explanation for an intractable problem.

A mother and son living in a Walmart parking lot in North Dakota in 2012. Credit... Eugene Richards

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By Matthew Desmond

• Published March 9, 2023 Updated April 3, 2023

In the past 50 years, scientists have mapped the entire human genome and eradicated smallpox. Here in the United States, infant-mortality rates and deaths from heart disease have fallen by roughly 70 percent, and the average American has gained almost a decade of life. Climate change was recognized as an existential threat. The internet was invented.

On the problem of poverty, though, there has been no real improvement — just a long stasis. As estimated by the federal government’s poverty line, 12.6 percent of the U.S. population was poor in 1970; two decades later, it was 13.5 percent; in 2010, it was 15.1 percent; and in 2019, it was 10.5 percent. To graph the share of Americans living in poverty over the past half-century amounts to drawing a line that resembles gently rolling hills. The line curves slightly up, then slightly down, then back up again over the years, staying steady through Democratic and Republican administrations, rising in recessions and falling in boom years.

What accounts for this lack of progress? It cannot be chalked up to how the poor are counted: Different measures spit out the same embarrassing result. When the government began reporting the Supplemental Poverty Measure in 2011, designed to overcome many of the flaws of the Official Poverty Measure, including not accounting for regional differences in costs of living and government benefits, the United States officially gained three million more poor people. Possible reductions in poverty from counting aid like food stamps and tax benefits were more than offset by recognizing how low-income people were burdened by rising housing and health care costs.

The American poor have access to cheap, mass-produced goods, as every American does. But that doesn’t mean they can access what matters most.

Any fair assessment of poverty must confront the breathtaking march of material progress. But the fact that standards of living have risen across the board doesn’t mean that poverty itself has fallen. Forty years ago, only the rich could afford cellphones. But cellphones have become more affordable over the past few decades, and now most Americans have one, including many poor people. This has led observers like Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill, senior fellows at the Brookings Institution, to assert that “access to certain consumer goods,” like TVs, microwave ovens and cellphones, shows that “the poor are not quite so poor after all.”

No, it doesn’t. You can’t eat a cellphone. A cellphone doesn’t grant you stable housing, affordable medical and dental care or adequate child care. In fact, as things like cellphones have become cheaper, the cost of the most necessary of life’s necessities, like health care and rent, has increased. From 2000 to 2022 in the average American city, the cost of fuel and utilities increased by 115 percent. The American poor, living as they do in the center of global capitalism, have access to cheap, mass-produced goods, as every American does. But that doesn’t mean they can access what matters most. As Michael Harrington put it 60 years ago: “It is much easier in the United States to be decently dressed than it is to be decently housed, fed or doctored.”

Why, then, when it comes to poverty reduction, have we had 50 years of nothing? When I first started looking into this depressing state of affairs, I assumed America’s efforts to reduce poverty had stalled because we stopped trying to solve the problem. I bought into the idea, popular among progressives, that the election of President Ronald Reagan (as well as that of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom) marked the ascendancy of market fundamentalism, or “neoliberalism,” a time when governments cut aid to the poor, lowered taxes and slashed regulations. If American poverty persisted, I thought, it was because we had reduced our spending on the poor. But I was wrong.

Reagan expanded corporate power, deeply cut taxes on the rich and rolled back spending on some antipoverty initiatives, especially in housing. But he was unable to make large-scale, long-term cuts to many of the programs that make up the American welfare state. Throughout Reagan’s eight years as president, antipoverty spending grew, and it continued to grow after he left office. Spending on the nation’s 13 largest means-tested programs — aid reserved for Americans who fall below a certain income level — went from $1,015 a person the year Reagan was elected president to $3,419 a person one year into Donald Trump’s administration, a 237 percent increase.

Most of this increase was due to health care spending, and Medicaid in particular. But even if we exclude Medicaid from the calculation, we find that federal investments in means-tested programs increased by 130 percent from 1980 to 2018, from $630 to $1,448 per person.

“Neoliberalism” is now part of the left’s lexicon, but I looked in vain to find it in the plain print of federal budgets, at least as far as aid to the poor was concerned. There is no evidence that the United States has become stingier over time. The opposite is true.

This makes the country’s stalled progress on poverty even more baffling. Decade after decade, the poverty rate has remained flat even as federal relief has surged.

If we have more than doubled government spending on poverty and achieved so little, one reason is that the American welfare state is a leaky bucket. Take welfare, for example: When it was administered through the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program, almost all of its funds were used to provide single-parent families with cash assistance. But when President Bill Clinton reformed welfare in 1996, replacing the old model with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), he transformed the program into a block grant that gives states considerable leeway in deciding how to distribute the money. As a result, states have come up with rather creative ways to spend TANF dollars. Arizona has used welfare money to pay for abstinence-only sex education. Pennsylvania diverted TANF funds to anti-abortion crisis-pregnancy centers. Maine used the money to support a Christian summer camp. Nationwide, for every dollar budgeted for TANF in 2020, poor families directly received just 22 cents.

We’ve approached the poverty question by pointing to poor people themselves, when we should have been focusing on exploitation.

A fair amount of government aid earmarked for the poor never reaches them. But this does not fully solve the puzzle of why poverty has been so stubbornly persistent, because many of the country’s largest social-welfare programs distribute funds directly to people. Roughly 85 percent of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program budget is dedicated to funding food stamps themselves, and almost 93 percent of Medicaid dollars flow directly to beneficiaries.

There are, it would seem, deeper structural forces at play, ones that have to do with the way the American poor are routinely taken advantage of. The primary reason for our stalled progress on poverty reduction has to do with the fact that we have not confronted the unrelenting exploitation of the poor in the labor, housing and financial markets.

As a theory of poverty, “exploitation” elicits a muddled response, causing us to think of course and but, no in the same instant. The word carries a moral charge, but social scientists have a fairly coolheaded way to measure exploitation: When we are underpaid relative to the value of what we produce, we experience labor exploitation; when we are overcharged relative to the value of something we purchase, we experience consumer exploitation. For example, if a family paid $1,000 a month to rent an apartment with a market value of $20,000, that family would experience a higher level of renter exploitation than a family who paid the same amount for an apartment with a market valuation of $100,000. When we don’t own property or can’t access credit, we become dependent on people who do and can, which in turn invites exploitation, because a bad deal for you is a good deal for me.

Our vulnerability to exploitation grows as our liberty shrinks. Because labor laws often fail to protect undocumented workers in practice, more than a third are paid below minimum wage, and nearly 85 percent are not paid overtime. Many of us who are U.S. citizens, or who crossed borders through official checkpoints, would not work for these wages. We don’t have to. If they migrate here as adults, those undocumented workers choose the terms of their arrangement. But just because desperate people accept and even seek out exploitative conditions doesn’t make those conditions any less exploitative. Sometimes exploitation is simply the best bad option.

Consider how many employers now get one over on American workers. The United States offers some of the lowest wages in the industrialized world. A larger share of workers in the United States make “low pay” — earning less than two-thirds of median wages — than in any other country belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. According to the group, nearly 23 percent of American workers labor in low-paying jobs, compared with roughly 17 percent in Britain, 11 percent in Japan and 5 percent in Italy. Poverty wages have swollen the ranks of the American working poor, most of whom are 35 or older.

One popular theory for the loss of good jobs is deindustrialization, which caused the shuttering of factories and the hollowing out of communities that had sprung up around them. Such a passive word, “deindustrialization” — leaving the impression that it just happened somehow, as if the country got deindustrialization the way a forest gets infested by bark beetles. But economic forces framed as inexorable, like deindustrialization and the acceleration of global trade, are often helped along by policy decisions like the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, which made it easier for companies to move their factories to Mexico and contributed to the loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs. The world has changed, but it has changed for other economies as well. Yet Belgium and Canada and many other countries haven’t experienced the kind of wage stagnation and surge in income inequality that the United States has.

Those countries managed to keep their unions. We didn’t. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, nearly a third of all U.S. workers carried union cards. These were the days of the United Automobile Workers, led by Walter Reuther, once savagely beaten by Ford’s brass-knuckle boys, and of the mighty American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations that together represented around 15 million workers, more than the population of California at the time.

In their heyday, unions put up a fight. In 1970 alone, 2.4 million union members participated in work stoppages, wildcat strikes and tense standoffs with company heads. The labor movement fought for better pay and safer working conditions and supported antipoverty policies. Their efforts paid off for both unionized and nonunionized workers, as companies like Eastman Kodak were compelled to provide generous compensation and benefits to their workers to prevent them from organizing. By one estimate, the wages of nonunionized men without a college degree would be 8 percent higher today if union strength remained what it was in the late 1970s, a time when worker pay climbed, chief-executive compensation was reined in and the country experienced the most economically equitable period in modern history.

It is important to note that Old Labor was often a white man’s refuge. In the 1930s, many unions outwardly discriminated against Black workers or segregated them into Jim Crow local chapters. In the 1960s, unions like the Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America enforced segregation within their ranks. Unions harmed themselves through their self-defeating racism and were further weakened by a changing economy. But organized labor was also attacked by political adversaries. As unions flagged, business interests sensed an opportunity. Corporate lobbyists made deep inroads in both political parties, beginning a public-relations campaign that pressured policymakers to roll back worker protections.

A national litmus test arrived in 1981, when 13,000 unionized air traffic controllers left their posts after contract negotiations with the Federal Aviation Administration broke down. When the workers refused to return, Reagan fired all of them. The public’s response was muted, and corporate America learned that it could crush unions with minimal blowback. And so it went, in one industry after another.

Today almost all private-sector employees (94 percent) are without a union, though roughly half of nonunion workers say they would organize if given the chance. They rarely are. Employers have at their disposal an arsenal of tactics designed to prevent collective bargaining, from hiring union-busting firms to telling employees that they could lose their jobs if they vote yes. Those strategies are legal, but companies also make illegal moves to block unions, like disciplining workers for trying to organize or threatening to close facilities. In 2016 and 2017, the National Labor Relations Board charged 42 percent of employers with violating federal law during union campaigns. In nearly a third of cases, this involved illegally firing workers for organizing.

Corporate lobbyists told us that organized labor was a drag on the economy — that once the companies had cleared out all these fusty, lumbering unions, the economy would rev up, raising everyone’s fortunes. But that didn’t come to pass. The negative effects of unions have been wildly overstated, and there is now evidence that unions play a role in increasing company productivity, for example by reducing turnover. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics measures productivity as how efficiently companies turn inputs (like materials and labor) into outputs (like goods and services). Historically, productivity, wages and profits rise and fall in lock step. But the American economy is less productive today than it was in the post-World War II period, when unions were at peak strength. The economies of other rich countries have slowed as well, including those with more highly unionized work forces, but it is clear that diluting labor power in America did not unleash economic growth or deliver prosperity to more people. “We were promised economic dynamism in exchange for inequality,” Eric Posner and Glen Weyl write in their book “Radical Markets.” “We got the inequality, but dynamism is actually declining.”

As workers lost power, their jobs got worse. For several decades after World War II, ordinary workers’ inflation-adjusted wages (known as “real wages”) increased by 2 percent each year. But since 1979, real wages have grown by only 0.3 percent a year. Astonishingly, workers with a high school diploma made 2.7 percent less in 2017 than they would have in 1979, adjusting for inflation. Workers without a diploma made nearly 10 percent less.

Lousy, underpaid work is not an indispensable, if regrettable, byproduct of capitalism, as some business defenders claim today. (This notion would have scandalized capitalism’s earliest defenders. John Stuart Mill, arch advocate of free people and free markets, once said that if widespread scarcity was a hallmark of capitalism, he would become a communist.) But capitalism is inherently about owners trying to give as little, and workers trying to get as much, as possible. With unions largely out of the picture, corporations have chipped away at the conventional midcentury work arrangement, which involved steady employment, opportunities for advancement and raises and decent pay with some benefits.

As the sociologist Gerald Davis has put it: Our grandparents had careers. Our parents had jobs. We complete tasks. Or at least that has been the story of the American working class and working poor.

Poor Americans aren’t just exploited in the labor market. They face consumer exploitation in the housing and financial markets as well.

There is a long history of slum exploitation in America. Money made slums because slums made money. Rent has more than doubled over the past two decades, rising much faster than renters’ incomes. Median rent rose from $483 in 2000 to $1,216 in 2021. Why have rents shot up so fast? Experts tend to offer the same rote answers to this question. There’s not enough housing supply, they say, and too much demand. Landlords must charge more just to earn a decent rate of return. Must they? How do we know?

We need more housing; no one can deny that. But rents have jumped even in cities with plenty of apartments to go around. At the end of 2021, almost 19 percent of rental units in Birmingham, Ala., sat vacant, as did 12 percent of those in Syracuse, N.Y. Yet rent in those areas increased by roughly 14 percent and 8 percent, respectively, over the previous two years. National data also show that rental revenues have far outpaced property owners’ expenses in recent years, especially for multifamily properties in poor neighborhoods. Rising rents are not simply a reflection of rising operating costs. There’s another dynamic at work, one that has to do with the fact that poor people — and particularly poor Black families — don’t have much choice when it comes to where they can live. Because of that, landlords can overcharge them, and they do.

A study I published with Nathan Wilmers found that after accounting for all costs, landlords operating in poor neighborhoods typically take in profits that are double those of landlords operating in affluent communities. If down-market landlords make more, it’s because their regular expenses (especially their mortgages and property-tax bills) are considerably lower than those in upscale neighborhoods. But in many cities with average or below-average housing costs — think Buffalo, not Boston — rents in the poorest neighborhoods are not drastically lower than rents in the middle-class sections of town. From 2015 to 2019, median monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the Indianapolis metropolitan area was $991; it was $816 in neighborhoods with poverty rates above 40 percent, just around 17 percent less. Rents are lower in extremely poor neighborhoods, but not by as much as you would think.

Yet where else can poor families live? They are shut out of homeownership because banks are disinclined to issue small-dollar mortgages, and they are also shut out of public housing, which now has waiting lists that stretch on for years and even decades. Struggling families looking for a safe, affordable place to live in America usually have but one choice: to rent from private landlords and fork over at least half their income to rent and utilities. If millions of poor renters accept this state of affairs, it’s not because they can’t afford better alternatives; it’s because they often aren’t offered any.

You can read injunctions against usury in the Vedic texts of ancient India, in the sutras of Buddhism and in the Torah. Aristotle and Aquinas both rebuked it. Dante sent moneylenders to the seventh circle of hell. None of these efforts did much to stem the practice, but they do reveal that the unprincipled act of trapping the poor in a cycle of debt has existed at least as long as the written word. It might be the oldest form of exploitation after slavery. Many writers have depicted America’s poor as unseen, shadowed and forgotten people: as “other” or “invisible.” But markets have never failed to notice the poor, and this has been particularly true of the market for money itself.

The deregulation of the banking system in the 1980s heightened competition among banks. Many responded by raising fees and requiring customers to carry minimum balances. In 1977, over a third of banks offered accounts with no service charge. By the early 1990s, only 5 percent did. Big banks grew bigger as community banks shuttered, and in 2021, the largest banks in America charged customers almost $11 billion in overdraft fees. Previous research showed that just 9 percent of account holders paid 84 percent of these fees. Who were the unlucky 9 percent? Customers who carried an average balance of less than $350. The poor were made to pay for their poverty.

In 2021, the average fee for overdrawing your account was $33.58. Because banks often issue multiple charges a day, it’s not uncommon to overdraw your account by $20 and end up paying $200 for it. Banks could (and do) deny accounts to people who have a history of overextending their money, but those customers also provide a steady revenue stream for some of the most powerful financial institutions in the world.

Every year: almost $11 billion in overdraft fees, $1.6 billion in check-cashing fees and up to $8.2 billion in payday-loan fees.

According to the F.D.I.C., one in 19 U.S. households had no bank account in 2019, amounting to more than seven million families. Compared with white families, Black and Hispanic families were nearly five times as likely to lack a bank account. Where there is exclusion, there is exploitation. Unbanked Americans have created a market, and thousands of check-cashing outlets now serve that market. Check-cashing stores generally charge from 1 to 10 percent of the total, depending on the type of check. That means that a worker who is paid $10 an hour and takes a $1,000 check to a check-cashing outlet will pay $10 to $100 just to receive the money he has earned, effectively losing one to 10 hours of work. (For many, this is preferable to the less-predictable exploitation by traditional banks, with their automatic overdraft fees. It’s the devil you know.) In 2020, Americans spent $1.6 billion just to cash checks. If the poor had a costless way to access their own money, over a billion dollars would have remained in their pockets during the pandemic-induced recession.

Poverty can mean missed payments, which can ruin your credit. But just as troublesome as bad credit is having no credit score at all, which is the case for 26 million adults in the United States. Another 19 million possess a credit history too thin or outdated to be scored. Having no credit (or bad credit) can prevent you from securing an apartment, buying insurance and even landing a job, as employers are increasingly relying on credit checks during the hiring process. And when the inevitable happens — when you lose hours at work or when the car refuses to start — the payday-loan industry steps in.

For most of American history, regulators prohibited lending institutions from charging exorbitant interest on loans. Because of these limits, banks kept interest rates between 6 and 12 percent and didn’t do much business with the poor, who in a pinch took their valuables to the pawnbroker or the loan shark. But the deregulation of the banking sector in the 1980s ushered the money changers back into the temple by removing strict usury limits. Interest rates soon reached 300 percent, then 500 percent, then 700 percent. Suddenly, some people were very interested in starting businesses that lent to the poor. In recent years, 17 states have brought back strong usury limits, capping interest rates and effectively prohibiting payday lending. But the trade thrives in most places. The annual percentage rate for a two-week $300 loan can reach 460 percent in California, 516 percent in Wisconsin and 664 percent in Texas.

Roughly a third of all payday loans are now issued online, and almost half of borrowers who have taken out online loans have had lenders overdraw their bank accounts. The average borrower stays indebted for five months, paying $520 in fees to borrow $375. Keeping people indebted is, of course, the ideal outcome for the payday lender. It’s how they turn a $15 profit into a $150 one. Payday lenders do not charge high fees because lending to the poor is risky — even after multiple extensions, most borrowers pay up. Lenders extort because they can.

Every year: almost $11 billion in overdraft fees, $1.6 billion in check-cashing fees and up to $8.2 billion in payday-loan fees. That’s more than $55 million in fees collected predominantly from low-income Americans each day — not even counting the annual revenue collected by pawnshops and title loan services and rent-to-own schemes. When James Baldwin remarked in 1961 how “extremely expensive it is to be poor,” he couldn’t have imagined these receipts.

“Predatory inclusion” is what the historian Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor calls it in her book “Race for Profit,” describing the longstanding American tradition of incorporating marginalized people into housing and financial schemes through bad deals when they are denied good ones. The exclusion of poor people from traditional banking and credit systems has forced them to find alternative ways to cash checks and secure loans, which has led to a normalization of their exploitation. This is all perfectly legal, after all, and subsidized by the nation’s richest commercial banks. The fringe banking sector would not exist without lines of credit extended by the conventional one. Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase bankroll payday lenders like Advance America and Cash America. Everybody gets a cut.

Poverty isn’t simply the condition of not having enough money. It’s the condition of not having enough choice and being taken advantage of because of that. When we ignore the role that exploitation plays in trapping people in poverty, we end up designing policy that is weak at best and ineffective at worst. For example, when legislation lifts incomes at the bottom without addressing the housing crisis, those gains are often realized instead by landlords, not wholly by the families the legislation was intended to help. A 2019 study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that when states raised minimum wages, families initially found it easier to pay rent. But landlords quickly responded to the wage bumps by increasing rents, which diluted the effect of the policy. This happened after the pandemic rescue packages, too: When wages began to rise in 2021 after worker shortages, rents rose as well, and soon people found themselves back where they started or worse.

Antipoverty programs work. Each year, millions of families are spared the indignities and hardships of severe deprivation because of these government investments. But our current antipoverty programs cannot abolish poverty by themselves. The Johnson administration started the War on Poverty and the Great Society in 1964. These initiatives constituted a bundle of domestic programs that included the Food Stamp Act, which made food aid permanent; the Economic Opportunity Act, which created Job Corps and Head Start; and the Social Security Amendments of 1965, which founded Medicare and Medicaid and expanded Social Security benefits. Nearly 200 pieces of legislation were signed into law in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s first five years in office, a breathtaking level of activity. And the result? Ten years after the first of these programs were rolled out in 1964, the share of Americans living in poverty was half what it was in 1960.

But the War on Poverty and the Great Society were started during a time when organized labor was strong, incomes were climbing, rents were modest and the fringe banking industry as we know it today didn’t exist. Today multiple forms of exploitation have turned antipoverty programs into something like dialysis, a treatment designed to make poverty less lethal, not to make it disappear.

This means we don’t just need deeper antipoverty investments. We need different ones, policies that refuse to partner with poverty, policies that threaten its very survival. We need to ensure that aid directed at poor people stays in their pockets, instead of being captured by companies whose low wages are subsidized by government benefits, or by landlords who raise the rents as their tenants’ wages rise, or by banks and payday-loan outlets who issue exorbitant fines and fees. Unless we confront the many forms of exploitation that poor families face, we risk increasing government spending only to experience another 50 years of sclerosis in the fight against poverty.

The best way to address labor exploitation is to empower workers. A renewed contract with American workers should make organizing easy. As things currently stand, unionizing a workplace is incredibly difficult. Under current labor law, workers who want to organize must do so one Amazon warehouse or one Starbucks location at a time. We have little chance of empowering the nation’s warehouse workers and baristas this way. This is why many new labor movements are trying to organize entire sectors. The Fight for $15 campaign, led by the Service Employees International Union, doesn’t focus on a single franchise (a specific McDonald’s store) or even a single company (McDonald’s) but brings together workers from several fast-food chains. It’s a new kind of labor power, and one that could be expanded: If enough workers in a specific economic sector — retail, hotel services, nursing — voted for the measure, the secretary of labor could establish a bargaining panel made up of representatives elected by the workers. The panel could negotiate with companies to secure the best terms for workers across the industry. This is a way to organize all Amazon warehouses and all Starbucks locations in a single go.

Sectoral bargaining, as it’s called, would affect tens of millions of Americans who have never benefited from a union of their own, just as it has improved the lives of workers in Europe and Latin America. The idea has been criticized by members of the business community, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has raised concerns about the inflexibility and even the constitutionality of sectoral bargaining, as well as by labor advocates, who fear that industrywide policies could nullify gains that existing unions have made or could be achieved only if workers make other sacrifices. Proponents of the idea counter that sectoral bargaining could even the playing field, not only between workers and bosses, but also between companies in the same sector that would no longer be locked into a race to the bottom, with an incentive to shortchange their work force to gain a competitive edge. Instead, the companies would be forced to compete over the quality of the goods and services they offer. Maybe we would finally reap the benefits of all that economic productivity we were promised.

We must also expand the housing options for low-income families. There isn’t a single right way to do this, but there is clearly a wrong way: the way we’re doing it now. One straightforward approach is to strengthen our commitment to the housing programs we already have. Public housing provides affordable homes to millions of Americans, but it’s drastically underfunded relative to the need. When the wealthy township of Cherry Hill, N.J., opened applications for 29 affordable apartments in 2021, 9,309 people applied. The sky-high demand should tell us something, though: that affordable housing is a life changer, and families are desperate for it.

We could also pave the way for more Americans to become homeowners, an initiative that could benefit poor, working-class and middle-class families alike — as well as scores of young people. Banks generally avoid issuing small-dollar mortgages, not because they’re riskier — these mortgages have the same delinquency rates as larger mortgages — but because they’re less profitable. Over the life of a mortgage, interest on $1 million brings in a lot more money than interest on $75,000. This is where the federal government could step in, providing extra financing to build on-ramps to first-time homeownership. In fact, it already does so in rural America through the 502 Direct Loan Program, which has moved more than two million families into their own homes. These loans, fully guaranteed and serviced by the Department of Agriculture, come with low interest rates and, for very poor families, cover the entire cost of the mortgage, nullifying the need for a down payment. Last year, the average 502 Direct Loan was for $222,300 but cost the government only $10,370 per loan, chump change for such a durable intervention. Expanding a program like this into urban communities would provide even more low- and moderate-income families with homes of their own.

We should also ensure fair access to capital. Banks should stop robbing the poor and near-poor of billions of dollars each year, immediately ending exorbitant overdraft fees. As the legal scholar Mehrsa Baradaran has pointed out, when someone overdraws an account, banks could simply freeze the transaction or could clear a check with insufficient funds, providing customers a kind of short-term loan with a low interest rate of, say, 1 percent a day.

States should rein in payday-lending institutions and insist that lenders make it clear to potential borrowers what a loan is ultimately likely to cost them. Just as fast-food restaurants must now publish calorie counts next to their burgers and shakes, payday-loan stores should publish the average overall cost of different loans. When Texas adopted disclosure rules, residents took out considerably fewer bad loans. If Texas can do this, why not California or Wisconsin? Yet to stop financial exploitation, we need to expand, not limit, low-income Americans’ access to credit. Some have suggested that the government get involved by having the U.S. Postal Service or the Federal Reserve issue small-dollar loans. Others have argued that we should revise government regulations to entice commercial banks to pitch in. Whatever our approach, solutions should offer low-income Americans more choice, a way to end their reliance on predatory lending institutions that can get away with robbery because they are the only option available.

In Tommy Orange’s novel, “There There,” a man trying to describe the problem of suicides on Native American reservations says: “Kids are jumping out the windows of burning buildings, falling to their deaths. And we think the problem is that they’re jumping.” The poverty debate has suffered from a similar kind of myopia. For the past half-century, we’ve approached the poverty question by pointing to poor people themselves — posing questions about their work ethic, say, or their welfare benefits — when we should have been focusing on the fire. The question that should serve as a looping incantation, the one we should ask every time we drive past a tent encampment, those tarped American slums smelling of asphalt and bodies, or every time we see someone asleep on the bus, slumped over in work clothes, is simply: Who benefits? Not: Why don’t you find a better job? Or: Why don’t you move? Or: Why don’t you stop taking out payday loans? But: Who is feeding off this?

Those who have amassed the most power and capital bear the most responsibility for America’s vast poverty: political elites who have utterly failed low-income Americans over the past half-century; corporate bosses who have spent and schemed to prioritize profits over families; lobbyists blocking the will of the American people with their self-serving interests; property owners who have exiled the poor from entire cities and fueled the affordable-housing crisis. Acknowledging this is both crucial and deliciously absolving; it directs our attention upward and distracts us from all the ways (many unintentional) that we — we the secure, the insured, the housed, the college-educated, the protected, the lucky — also contribute to the problem.

Corporations benefit from worker exploitation, sure, but so do consumers, who buy the cheap goods and services the working poor produce, and so do those of us directly or indirectly invested in the stock market. Landlords are not the only ones who benefit from housing exploitation; many homeowners do, too, their property values propped up by the collective effort to make housing scarce and expensive. The banking and payday-lending industries profit from the financial exploitation of the poor, but so do those of us with free checking accounts, as those accounts are subsidized by billions of dollars in overdraft fees.

Living our daily lives in ways that express solidarity with the poor could mean we pay more; anti-exploitative investing could dampen our stock portfolios. By acknowledging those costs, we acknowledge our complicity. Unwinding ourselves from our neighbors’ deprivation and refusing to live as enemies of the poor will require us to pay a price. It’s the price of our restored humanity and renewed country.

Matthew Desmond is a professor of sociology at Princeton University and a contributing writer for the magazine. His latest book, “Poverty, by America,” from which this article is adapted, is being published on March 21 by Crown.

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the legal protections for undocumented workers. They are afforded rights under U.S. labor laws, though in practice those laws often fail to protect them.

An earlier version of this article implied an incorrect date for a statistic about overdraft fees. The research was conducted between 2005 and 2012, not in 2021.

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Worlds of Change

• Portals to the Past: Widener Exhibit

Slavery in Colonial North America

Essay by 2016 arcadia fellow teresa mcculla.

Slavery is central to the history of colonial North America. For more than two centuries, European Americans treated enslaved men, women, and children as objects that could be bought and sold .[i] Harvard’s digitized collections can help scholars understand how the institution of slavery suffused every aspect of the colonial world.

The crude logic of enslaving human beings cast people as tools who required input (food and clothing) in order to produce the output of their labor. In the calculations of colonial-era businessmen, all of these components, including the body of the enslaved person, could be given a monetary value. For example, in February 1724, Harvard tutor Henry Flynt speculated as to the financial feasibility of operating a ferry with the assistance of a slave. “ [I]f a man…buys a negro at 60 pounds who lives 20 year[s] his Labour is but 3 pounds a year ,” he reasoned, “and his Victuals 26 pounds per annum makes 29 pounds which with 6 pounds wear and tare and 50 pounds rent makes 85 pounds.”[ii] The man Flynt imagined was an aggregate of calculations: a business investment to manage. Flynt applied such arithmetic to personal matters as well. When Flynt’s elderly mother passed away in the 1730s, he quibbled with his brother-in-law over Toney, the enslaved man who had worked for her. The men cared less for Toney’s fate, though, than the cash he represented. Toney became an element of Flynt’s mother’s estate to settle, alongside “all the household stuff” that Flynt could tally, which included “ Brass Silver Iron bedding Linnen .”[iii] Flynt sold Toney to another enslaver and balanced the price of the man’s sale against the money he paid for his mother’s final expenses: “ the Grave and bel ringing and pall etc .”[iv] Treated as an investment, Toney disappeared from Flynt’s diary after his sale. Most researchers consult the diary of Henry Flynt, an enormous tome, to understand the workings of Harvard College life and colonial accounting practices. However, the experiences of historical figures like Toney count as an equally important, if subtle, presence in this and similar records.

Enslaved people are particularly prominent in archived manuscripts related to trade and agriculture in the colonial Caribbean. For example, in 1763, Britain legislated the regulation of auctions in Barbados , events which included the sale of enslaved people.[v] In 1777, a Barbados official wrote to members of the British Council for Plantation Affairs to ask for more “ India and Guinea Corn for the Negroes ,” who toiled in sugarcane plantations there.[vi] Naval captains throughout the Caribbean also hired local people of color as temporary laborers to assist in the work of getting their ships in and out of ports, as they transported coffee, sugar, rum, and slaves among European colonies.[vii]

Legal manuscripts count as another important genre in the documented history of colonial slavery.[viii] Occasionally, enslaved people used the American court system to sue for their own freedom , but more often they stood at the center of trials, treated as disputed property or accused of crimes.[ix] One Delaware court case at the close of the colonial period demonstrated the multiple implications of interpreting a person as an owned object. In less than fifteen minutes, a jury convicted George, an enslaved man accused of raping a white woman, and sentenced him to death. The court treated George as a human in convicting him of a violent crime and executing him. But George’s execution also represented the destruction of property from the perspective of George’s enslaver. Thus, the judge ordered the jury to not only determine George’s guilt or innocence but also to “ assess the value of the Negro, two thirds of which by law is to be paid by the County to the owner .”[x] Because the state had carried out George’s execution, it owed a debt to George’s owner.

The humanity of enslaved men, women, and children emerges in many other archival sources. For example, under the heading “ January 8th A.M. Family Weighed 1747/8 ,” a teenage John Holyoke recorded in his diary the weights of all members of his household.[xi] Alongside his mother and siblings, Holyoke weighed his father, then president of Harvard College, and Juba, a slave. As this episode demonstrated, even as part of a child’s game, enslaved and free men could be assessed in the same units of measure despite the vast differences in their social situations. A generation later, a man enslaved to Cambridge widow Sarah Bordman left his own mark in an ephemeral document without writing a word. Shoemaker William Manning issued a bill to Bordman listing the costs associated with mending the shoes of “ her negro Cato ” between May 9, 1770 and July 4, 1771.[xii] Every two months, if not more often, Manning mended Cato’s shoes. During this time frame, he also provided four new pairs of shoes. Cato’s rapidly worn shoes recorded his labor for Bordman. Soles that required constant repair testified to the miles walked and work done by an enslaved man in colonial Massachusetts, even if Cato left no written memoir of his own.

In these ways, archival records that track the history of slavery add deep moral complexity to political, economic, and social developments, as well as daily life, in colonial North America and the new United States.

[i] Bordman family. Papers of the Bordman family, 1686-1837. Deed of sale, 1716/7 January 1. HUG 1228 Box 2, Folder 3, Harvard University Archives.

[ii] February 8, 1724. Diary of Henry Flynt, 1723-1747.

[iii] January 22, 1735/6. Diary of Henry Flynt, 1723-1747.

[iv] November 24, 1737. Diary of Henry Flynt, 1723-1747.

[v] Barbados. Laws, etc. An Act of Assembly of Barbadoes to regulate sales at outcry and the proceedings of persons executing the office of Provost Marshall General of the said island and their under officers, 1763. HLS MS 1046, Harvard Law School Library.

[vi] Barbados. A collection of autograph letters and original documents relating to the Island of Barbados in the 18th century, ca. 1730-1778. HLS MS 1047, Harvard Law School Library.

[vii] Bills of lading for the ship Lydia, 1766. Small Manuscript Collection, Harvard Law School Library; Holman, Gabriel. Bill of disbursments [for the] sch[oone]r Lydia: manuscript, 1790. MS Eng 659. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

[viii] Mexican Legal Documents, 1577-1805. " Denunció " of a black slave named Ana or Mariana of the city of Guastepeque, 20 December 1658. 1-8, Harvard Law School Library.

[ix] Saml. Agg. – Negro / John Forbes, Petition for freedom. Delaware. Court of Common Pleas. Records, 1790-1805. Small Manuscript Collection, Volume 3, Harvard Law School Library; Indict _ Felony in Stealing a Negro Woman called Hannah price $200 property of ___ Porter and for aiding Negro David, his slave and her husband, in Stealing said Hannah Plea Not Guilty. Delaware. Court of Common Pleas. Records, 1790-1805. Small Manuscript Collection, Volume 3, Harvard Law School Library.

[x] State / A Negro George the Slave of Susan H__. Delaware. Court of Common Pleas. Records, 1790-1805. Small Manuscript Collection, Volume 3, Harvard Law School Library.

[xi] Holyoke family. Holyoke family diaries, 1742-1748. Diary of John Holyoke, 1748. Interleaved almanac, 1748. HUM 46 Volume 6, Harvard University Archives.

[xii] Bordman family. Papers of the Bordman family, 1686-1837. Bill, 1771 August 23. HUG 1228 Box 2, Folder 39, Harvard University Archives.

To Fight Inequality, America Needs to Rethink Its Economic Model

F or decades, economic policy in most liberal democracies has been premised on two core beliefs: that free markets would maximize economic growth, and that we could address inequality through redistribution.

The recent revival of industrial policy, championed by President Biden, is a clear repudiation of the first of these beliefs. It reflects a growing recognition among economists that state intervention to shape markets and steer investment is crucial for fostering innovation, protecting strategically important sectors like semi-conductors, and tackling the climate emergency.

But we must also reassess the second belief—that taxes and transfers alone can address the vast inequalities that have brought American democracy to such a perilous juncture. Doing so will lead us towards a more fundamental rethink of our economic institutions, and the values that guide them.

This is partly a pragmatic response to economic reality. The massive increase in inequality since the 1980s in America was mostly driven not by a reduction in redistribution, but by the growing gap in earnings between low skill workers, whose wages have suffered an unprecedented period of stagnation, and college-educated professionals whose salaries have continued to soar. And while inequality has increased in most advanced economies, that it is so much higher in the U.S. compared to Europe is mostly the result of bigger gaps in earnings than lower levels of redistribution. In other words, even if America were to increase the generosity of the welfare state to European levels it would still be much more unequal.

But the need to look beyond redistribution is about more than economics, it is about resisting the narrow focus on money that dominates most debates about inequality, and the tendency to reduce our interests as citizens to those of consumers. While government transfers are essential for making sure that everyone can meet their basic needs, simply topping up people’s incomes fails to recognize the importance of work as a source of independence, identity, and community, and does nothing to address the insecurity faced by gig-economy workers, or the constant surveillance of employees in Amazon warehouses.

This is not purely a moral issue. According to a recent paper by economists at Columbia and Princeton, the Democratic Party’s shift towards a “compensate the losers ” strategy in the 1970s and 1980s—taxing high earners to fund welfare payments to the poor—played a key role in driving away less educated voters, who disproportionately support “pre-redistributive” policies like higher minimum wages and stronger unions.

Things are moving in the right direction. President Biden has put “good jobs” at the centre of his economic agenda, claiming that “a job is about [a] lot more than a pay cheque. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect.” Leading economists such as Dani Rodrik at Harvard and Daron Acemoglu at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s have started to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy that such jobs are an inevitable by-product of a well-functioning market economy. This shift of focus towards the production or supply side of the economy has been variously termed “ productivism ”, “ modern supply-side economics ” and “ supply-side progressivism .”

Read More: Why Joe Biden is Running on the Economy

And yet, to grasp the full potential of these ideas we must look beyond economics to philosophy. Contemporary thinkers such as Michael Sandel and Elizabeth Anderson have done much to put questions about work back on the agenda. But for a systematic vision of a just society that recognizes the fundamental importance of work we should revisit the ideas of arguably the 20th-century’s greatest political philosopher, John Rawls—an early advocate for what we would now call “pre-distribution,” who argued that every citizen should have access to good jobs, a fair share of society’s wealth, and a say over how work is organized.

The publication of Rawls’s magnum opus A Theory of Justice in 1971 marks a watershed moment in the history of political thought, drawing favourable comparisons to the likes of John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, even Plato. Rawls’s most famous idea is a thought experiment called the “original position.” If we want to know what a fair society would look like, he argued, we should imagine how we would choose to organize it if we didn’t know what our individual position would be—rich or poor, Black or white, Christian of Muslim— as if behind a “veil of ignorance.”

Our first priority would be to secure a set of “basic liberties,” such as free speech and the right to vote, that are the basis for individual freedom and civic equality.

When it comes to the economy, we would want “fair equality of opportunity,” and we would tolerate a degree of inequality so that people have incentives to work hard and innovate, making society richer overall. But rather than assuming that the benefits would trickle down to those at the bottom, Rawls argued that we would want to organize our economy so that the least well-off would be better off than under any alternative system—a concept he called the “difference principle.”

This principle has often been interpreted as justifying a fairly conventional strategy of taxing the rich and redistributing to the poor. But Rawls explicitly rejected “welfare state capitalism” in favour of what he called a “property-owning democracy.” Rather than simply topping up the incomes of the least well off, society should “put in the hands of citizens generally, and not only of a few, sufficient productive means for them to be fully cooperating members of society.”

Doing so is essential for individual dignity and self-respect, he argued, warning that “Lacking a sense of long-term security and the opportunity for meaningful work and occupation is not only destructive of citizens’ self-respect but of their sense that they are members of society and not simply caught in it. This leads to self-hatred, bitterness, and resentment” – feelings that could threaten the stability of liberal democracy itself. A focus on work is also necessary for maintaining a sense of reciprocity since every able citizen would be expected to contribute to society in return for a fair reward.

Rawls’s philosophy offers the kind of big picture vision that has been missing on the center-left for a generation—a unifying alternative to ‘identity politics’ grounded in the best of America’s political traditions. It also points towards a genuinely transformative economic programme that would address the concerns of long-neglected lower-income voters, not simply for higher incomes but for a chance to contribute to society and to be treated with respect.

At the heart of this vision is the idea that productive resources—both human capital (skills) and ownership of physical capital (like stocks and shares)—should be widely shared. People’s incomes would still depend on their individual effort and good fortune, but wages and profits would be more equal, and there would be less need for redistribution.

How might we bring this about?

First, we would need to ensure equal access to education, irrespective of family background. Sadly, the reality in America today is that children from the richest fifth of households are fivetimes more likely to get a college degree than those from the poorest fifth. Achieving true equality of opportunity is a generational challenge, but the direction should be towards universal early years education, school funding based on need rather than local wealth, and a higher education system where tuition subsidies and publicly-funded income-contingent loans guarantee access to all.

We also need to shift focus towards the more than half of the population who don’t get a four-year college degree. Our obsession with academic higher education—justified in part on the basis that this will generate growth, which in turn will benefit non-graduates—is simply the educational equivalent of trickle-down economics. At the very least, public subsidies should be made available on equal terms for those who want to follow a vocational route, as the U.K. is doing through the introduction of a Lifelong Learning Entitlement from 2025, providing every individual with financial support for four years of post-18 education, covering both long and short courses, and vocational and academic subjects.

Second, we must address the vastly unequal distribution of wealth . Thewealthiest 10 % of Americans have around 70 % of all personal wealth compared to roughly 2% the entire bottom half. Sensible policies like guaranteed minimum interest rates for small savers and tax breaks to encourage employee share ownership would encourage middle-class savings. But to shift the dial on wealth inequality we should be open to something more radical, like a universal minimum inheritance paid to each citizen at the age of eighteen, funded through progressive taxes on inheritance and wealth. If developments in AI push more income towards the owners of capital, something like this will become necessary.

Finally, we need to give workers real power to shape how companies are run. The idea that owners, or shareholders, should make these decisions is often treated as an immutable fact of economic life. But this “shareholder primacy” is neither natural nor inevitable about, and in most European countries employees have the right to elect representatives to company boards and to ‘works councils’ with a say over working conditions. This system of ‘co-management’ allows owners and worker to strike a balance between pursuing profit and all the other things we want from work – security, dignity, a sense of achievement, community – in a way that makes sense for a particular firm. The benefits of co-management appear to come at little or no cost in terms of profits or competitiveness, are popular with managers, and may even increase  business investment and productivity.

Critics will no doubt denounce these ideas as “socialism.” But as we have seen, they have impeccable liberal credentials, and are perfectly compatible with the dynamic market economy that is so vital both for individual freedom and economic prosperity. Neither are they somehow “un-American.” As Elizabeth Anderson has reminded us , America was the great hope of free market egalitarians from Adam Smith through to Abraham Lincoln, whose dreams of a society of small-scale independent producers were dashed by the industrial revolution, and would have been horrified by the hierarchy and subservience of contemporary capitalism. Rawls’s ideal of property-owning democracy can help us revive this vision for the 21 st century.

Still, even sympathetic readers might wonder whether there is any point talking about a new economic paradigm when the U.S. has failed even to raise the Federal minimum wage since 2009. But this would be to ignore the lessons of history. As the neoliberal era comes to an end, we should learn from its leading architects Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, who were nothing if not bold, and saw their ideas go from heresy to orthodoxy in a single generation. As Friedman put it “Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around."

It often takes a generation or two before the ideas of truly great thinkers start to shape real politics. Now, for the first time since the publication of  A Theory of Justice  just over half a century ago, there is an urgent need and appetite for systematic political thinking on a scale that only a philosopher like Rawls can provide. In the face of widespread cynicism, even despair about the American project, his ideas offer a hopeful vision of the future whose time has come.

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The Structure and Cultural Significance of the Teepee

This essay about the cultural significance and architectural ingenuity of the Indigenous teepee, particularly among North American Plains tribes. It explores how the teepee’s design, materials, and communal construction reflect Indigenous ethos and adaptation to their environment. The teepee symbolizes more than just a dwelling; it embodies spiritual beliefs, communal collaboration, and resilience. Despite historical changes, including government policies and societal shifts, the teepee remains a potent emblem of Native American heritage, fostering unity, reverence for nature, and cultural connection among Indigenous communities today.

How it works

The Indigenous teepee, an emblematic symbol entrenched in North American Indigenous heritage, stands out as an enduring representation of Indigenous ethos. This iconic conical abode, historically affiliated with Plains tribes, embodies not merely a pragmatic and adaptable dwelling but also embodies cultural opulence and communal ethos. Delving into its architectural configuration, historical trajectory, and cultural import unveils invaluable insights into how Indigenous communities acclimatized to their surroundings and preserved a robust sense of identity.

Fundamentally, the teepee’s architectural blueprint encompasses a framework of elongated timber poles arranged in a conical format and draped with a sturdy covering, traditionally fashioned from buffalo hides.

The poles are strategically aligned to mesh at the zenith, fashioning a stable, weather-resilient edifice. A vent at the apex facilitated airflow from an internal hearth. This design, both rudimentary and inventive, furnished warmth and shelter amidst inclement conditions while facilitating ventilation and natural illumination. The mobility of the teepee rendered it well-suited to the nomadic lifestyle of Plains tribes, who trailed the migratory paths of buffalo herds.

In the summertime, teepees were often sheathed in lighter fabrics to enhance airflow, whereas weightier hides were employed in winter to insulate against the chill. The entrance flap, customarily oriented towards the east, symbolized the dawn and the commencement of each day. Internally, spatial organization frequently mirrored social customs, with designated zones earmarked for various familial members or activities.

The cultural resonance of the teepee transcends its utilitarian functionality. For myriad Plains tribes, it epitomized the celestial order and the interconnection between the terrestrial and the divine. The conical contour represented the hallowed peak, while the aperture atop was perceived as a conduit through which supplications and fumes from sacred conflagrations could ascend to the heavens. Certain tribes even attributed emblematic connotations to the quantity of poles employed, with each pole symbolizing a distinct virtue or principle such as fidelity, esteem, or fortitude.

The erection and preservation of teepees were collaborative endeavors, with divergent responsibilities delegated to men and women in accordance with traditional gender roles. Men typically undertook the crafting of the wooden framework and the procurement of hides, while women engaged in hide processing, stitching, and domestic interior arrangement. This division of labor fortified communal ties and underscored the significance of mutual cooperation within the society.

Across time, the materials utilized to sheath teepees underwent evolution. With burgeoning trade with European settlers, Plains tribes gradually transitioned to canvas and other textiles in lieu of hides. The exterior of teepees frequently bore embellishments in the form of painted motifs, reflective of personal or communal narratives, spiritual convictions, or martial exploits.

The advent of reservations in the late 19th century precipitated seismic shifts in the lifestyle of numerous Native American tribes, including their utilization of teepees. Governmental initiatives aimed at assimilation advocated for the adoption of permanent domiciliary structures over traditional lodgings like teepees. Nevertheless, teepees retained their cultural significance as emblems of legacy, resilience, and communal solidarity. Presently, they persist in ceremonial contexts and festivities.

In contemporary contexts, the teepee has metamorphosed into a broader emblem of Native American cultural patrimony. It continues to evoke sentiments of unity, resilience, and reverence for nature. Countless Native American artisans, intellectuals, and educators leverage the teepee as a conduit to reconnect with their cultural lineage and to edify others regarding the customs and chronicles of Plains tribes.

In summation, the Indigenous teepee serves as a testament to the resourcefulness and adaptability of Plains tribes. Its architectural configuration, conceived for practicality and mobility, facilitated the sustenance of a migratory lifestyle while embodying profound spiritual and communal import. Despite historical vicissitudes and sociocultural transformations, the teepee remains a potent emblem of Native American legacy and ethos, furnishing a glimpse into the opulent traditions and principles that have molded Indigenous cultures across North America.

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The Structure and Cultural Significance of the Teepee. (2024, May 12). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/the-structure-and-cultural-significance-of-the-teepee/

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What is climate change mitigation and why is it urgent?

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• Climate change mitigation involves actions to reduce or prevent greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.
• Mitigation efforts include transitioning to renewable energy sources, enhancing energy efficiency, adopting regenerative agricultural practices and protecting and restoring forests and critical ecosystems.
• Effective mitigation requires a whole-of-society approach and structural transformations to reduce emissions and limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
• International cooperation, for example through the Paris Agreement, is crucial in guiding and achieving global and national mitigation goals.
• Mitigation efforts face challenges such as the world's deep-rooted dependency on fossil fuels, the increased demand for new mineral resources and the difficulties in revamping our food systems.
• These challenges also offer opportunities to improve resilience and contribute to sustainable development.

What is climate change mitigation?

Climate change mitigation refers to any action taken by governments, businesses or people to reduce or prevent greenhouse gases, or to enhance carbon sinks that remove them from the atmosphere. These gases trap heat from the sun in our planet’s atmosphere, keeping it warm. 

Since the industrial era began, human activities have led to the release of dangerous levels of greenhouse gases, causing global warming and climate change. However, despite unequivocal research about the impact of our activities on the planet’s climate and growing awareness of the severe danger climate change poses to our societies, greenhouse gas emissions keep rising. If we can slow down the rise in greenhouse gases, we can slow down the pace of climate change and avoid its worst consequences.

Reducing greenhouse gases can be achieved by:

• Shifting away from fossil fuels : Fossil fuels are the biggest source of greenhouse gases, so transitioning to modern renewable energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal power, and advancing sustainable modes of transportation, is crucial.
• Improving energy efficiency : Using less energy overall – in buildings, industries, public and private spaces, energy generation and transmission, and transportation – helps reduce emissions. This can be achieved by using thermal comfort standards, better insulation and energy efficient appliances, and by improving building design, energy transmission systems and vehicles.
• Changing agricultural practices : Certain farming methods release high amounts of methane and nitrous oxide, which are potent greenhouse gases. Regenerative agricultural practices – including enhancing soil health, reducing livestock-related emissions, direct seeding techniques and using cover crops – support mitigation, improve resilience and decrease the cost burden on farmers.
• The sustainable management and conservation of forests : Forests act as carbon sinks , absorbing carbon dioxide and reducing the overall concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Measures to reduce deforestation and forest degradation are key for climate mitigation and generate multiple additional benefits such as biodiversity conservation and improved water cycles.
• Restoring and conserving critical ecosystems : In addition to forests, ecosystems such as wetlands, peatlands, and grasslands, as well as coastal biomes such as mangrove forests, also contribute significantly to carbon sequestration, while supporting biodiversity and enhancing climate resilience.
• Creating a supportive environment : Investments, policies and regulations that encourage emission reductions, such as incentives, carbon pricing and limits on emissions from key sectors are crucial to driving climate change mitigation.

Photo: Stephane Bellerose/UNDP Mauritius

Photo: La Incre and Lizeth Jurado/PROAmazonia

What is the 1.5°C goal and why do we need to stick to it?

In 2015, 196 Parties to the UN Climate Convention in Paris adopted the Paris Agreement , a landmark international treaty, aimed at curbing global warming and addressing the effects of climate change. Its core ambition is to cap the rise in global average temperatures to well below 2°C above levels observed prior to the industrial era, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C.

The 1.5°C goal is extremely important, especially for vulnerable communities already experiencing severe climate change impacts. Limiting warming below 1.5°C will translate into less extreme weather events and sea level rise, less stress on food production and water access, less biodiversity and ecosystem loss, and a lower chance of irreversible climate consequences.

To limit global warming to the critical threshold of 1.5°C, it is imperative for the world to undertake significant mitigation action. This requires a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent before 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by mid-century.

What are the policy instruments that countries can use to drive mitigation?

Everyone has a role to play in climate change mitigation, from individuals adopting sustainable habits and advocating for change to governments implementing regulations, providing incentives and facilitating investments. The private sector, particularly those businesses and companies responsible for causing high emissions, should take a leading role in innovating, funding and driving climate change mitigation solutions. 

International collaboration and technology transfer is also crucial given the global nature and size of the challenge. As the main platform for international cooperation on climate action, the Paris Agreement has set forth a series of responsibilities and policy tools for its signatories. One of the primary instruments for achieving the goals of the treaty is Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) . These are the national climate pledges that each Party is required to develop and update every five years. NDCs articulate how each country will contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhance climate resilience.   While NDCs include short- to medium-term targets, long-term low emission development strategies (LT-LEDS) are policy tools under the Paris Agreement through which countries must show how they plan to achieve carbon neutrality by mid-century. These strategies define a long-term vision that gives coherence and direction to shorter-term national climate targets.

Photo: Mucyo Serge/UNDP Rwanda

Photo: William Seal/UNDP Sudan

At the same time, the call for climate change mitigation has evolved into a call for reparative action, where high-income countries are urged to rectify past and ongoing contributions to the climate crisis. This approach reflects the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which advocates for climate justice, recognizing the unequal historical responsibility for the climate crisis, emphasizing that wealthier countries, having profited from high-emission activities, bear a greater obligation to lead in mitigating these impacts. This includes not only reducing their own emissions, but also supporting vulnerable countries in their transition to low-emission development pathways.

Another critical aspect is ensuring a just transition for workers and communities that depend on the fossil fuel industry and its many connected industries. This process must prioritize social equity and create alternative employment opportunities as part of the shift towards renewable energy and more sustainable practices.

For emerging economies, innovation and advancements in technology have now demonstrated that robust economic growth can be achieved with clean, sustainable energy sources. By integrating renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind and geothermal power into their growth strategies, these economies can reduce their emissions, enhance energy security and create new economic opportunities and jobs. This shift not only contributes to global mitigation efforts but also sets a precedent for sustainable development.

What are some of the challenges slowing down climate change mitigation efforts?

Mitigating climate change is fraught with complexities, including the global economy's deep-rooted dependency on fossil fuels and the accompanying challenge of eliminating fossil fuel subsidies. This reliance – and the vested interests that have a stake in maintaining it – presents a significant barrier to transitioning to sustainable energy sources.

The shift towards decarbonization and renewable energy is driving increased demand for critical minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earth metals. Since new mining projects can take up to 15 years to yield output, mineral supply chains could become a bottleneck for decarbonization efforts. In addition, these minerals are predominantly found in a few, mostly low-income countries, which could heighten supply chain vulnerabilities and geopolitical tensions.

Furthermore, due to the significant demand for these minerals and the urgency of the energy transition, the scaled-up investment in the sector has the potential to exacerbate environmental degradation, economic and governance risks, and social inequalities, affecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and workers. Addressing these concerns necessitates implementing social and environmental safeguards, embracing circular economy principles, and establishing and enforcing responsible policies and regulations .

Agriculture is currently the largest driver of deforestation worldwide. A transformation in our food systems to reverse the impact that agriculture has on forests and biodiversity is undoubtedly a complex challenge. But it is also an important opportunity. The latest IPCC report highlights that adaptation and mitigation options related to land, water and food offer the greatest potential in responding to the climate crisis. Shifting to regenerative agricultural practices will not only ensure a healthy, fair and stable food supply for the world’s population, but also help to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

Photo: UNDP India

Photo: Nino Zedginidze/UNDP Georgia

What are some examples of climate change mitigation?

In Mauritius , UNDP, with funding from the Green Climate Fund, has supported the government to install battery energy storage capacity that has enabled 50 MW of intermittent renewable energy to be connected to the grid, helping to avoid 81,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. 

In Indonesia , UNDP has been working with the government for over a decade to support sustainable palm oil production. In 2019, the country adopted a National Action Plan on Sustainable Palm Oil, which was collaboratively developed by government, industry and civil society representatives. The plan increased the adoption of practices to minimize the adverse social and environmental effects of palm oil production and to protect forests. Since 2015, 37 million tonnes of direct greenhouse gas emissions have been avoided and 824,000 hectares of land with high conservation value have been protected.

In Moldova and Paraguay , UNDP has helped set up Green City Labs that are helping build more sustainable cities. This is achieved by implementing urban land use and mobility planning, prioritizing energy efficiency in residential buildings, introducing low-carbon public transport, implementing resource-efficient waste management, and switching to renewable energy sources. 

UNDP has supported the governments of Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Indonesia to implement results-based payments through the REDD+ (Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries) framework. These include payments for environmental services and community forest management programmes that channel international climate finance resources to local actors on the ground, specifically forest communities and Indigenous Peoples. 

UNDP is also supporting small island developing states like the Comoros to invest in renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure. Through the Africa Minigrids Program , solar minigrids will be installed in two priority communities, Grand Comore and Moheli, providing energy access through distributed renewable energy solutions to those hardest to reach.

And in South Africa , a UNDP initative to boost energy efficiency awareness among the general population and improve labelling standards has taken over commercial shopping malls.

What is UNDP’s role in supporting climate change mitigation?

UNDP aims to assist countries with their climate change mitigation efforts, guiding them towards sustainable, low-carbon and climate-resilient development. This support is in line with achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly those related to affordable and clean energy (SDG7), sustainable cities and communities (SDG11), and climate action (SDG13). Specifically, UNDP’s offer of support includes developing and improving legislation and policy, standards and regulations, capacity building, knowledge dissemination, and financial mobilization for countries to pilot and scale-up mitigation solutions such as renewable energy projects, energy efficiency initiatives and sustainable land-use practices. 

With financial support from the Global Environment Facility and the Green Climate Fund, UNDP has an active portfolio of 94 climate change mitigation projects in 69 countries. These initiatives are not only aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but also at contributing to sustainable and resilient development pathways.

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Ho Tuan Anh delivers goods with his new e-motorbike. Photo by: Phan Huong Giang/UNDP Viet Nam

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CNCF-hosted Co-located Events North America 2024

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AppDeveloperCon, ArgoCon, BackstageCon, Cilium + eBPF Day, Cloud Native + Kubernetes AI Day, Cloud Native StartupFest, Cloud Native University, Data on Kubernetes Day, EnvoyCon, Istio Day, Kubernetes on Edge Day, Observability Day, OpenFeature Summit, OpenTofu Day and Platform Engineering Day 

From technical sessions to lightning talks, CNCF-hosted co-located events support the future of cloud native computing.

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