Area | 21,780,142 km2 (8,409,360 sq mi) |
---|---|
Population | 375,278,947 (2021 est.) |
Population density | 16.5/km2 (42.7/sq mi) |
GDP (nominal) | $27.5 trillion (2022) [1] |
Countries | |
Dependencies | |
Languages | English, French, Spanish, Danish, Greenlandic, and various recognized regional languages |
Time zones | UTC−10:00 (west Aleutians) to UTC+00:00 (Danmarkshavn, Greenland) |
Largest cities | |
UN M49 code | 021 – Northern America003 – North America 019 – Americas 001 – World |
Northern America is the northernmost subregion of North America as well as the northernmost region in the Americas. The boundaries may be drawn significantly differently depending on the source of the definition. In one definition, it lies directly north of Middle America. [2] Northern America's land frontier with the rest of North America then coincides with the Mexico–United States border. Geopolitically, according to the United Nations' scheme of geographical regions and subregions, Northern America consists of Bermuda, Canada, Greenland, Saint Pierre and Miquelon and the United States (the contiguous United States and Alaska only, excluding Hawaii, Navassa Island, Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands, and other minor U.S. Pacific territories). [3] [4]
Maps using the term Northern America date back to 1755, when the region was occupied by France, Great Britain, and Spain. [5] The Solemn Act of the Declaration of Independence of Northern America in 1813 applied to Mexico. Today, Northern America includes the Canada–US dyad, developed countries that exhibit very high Human Development Indexes and intense economic integration while sharing many socioeconomic characteristics. [6]
The World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions has "Northern America" as the seventh of its nine "botanical continents". Its definition differs from the usual political one: Mexico is included, Bermuda is excluded (being placed in the Caribbean region), Hawaii is excluded (being placed in the Pacific botanical continent) and all of the Aleutian Islands, Russian as well as American, are included. [7]
Country / Territory | Population [8] [9] | Area (km2) [10] | Density (people per km2) | Capital |
---|---|---|---|---|
Bermuda | 64,185 | 53.2 | 1,206.48 | Hamilton |
Canada | 38,155,012 | 9,984,670 | 3.82 | Ottawa |
Greenland | 56,243 | 2,166,086 | 0.03 | Nuuk |
Saint Pierre and Miquelon | 5,883 | 242 | 24.31 | Saint Pierre |
United States [11] | 336,997,624 | 9,826,675 | 34.29 | Washington, D.C. |
* indicates "Demographics of country or territory" links.
Year | Population [12] | % change | Canada | % | United States | % |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1950 | 172,603,000 | — | 13,733,000 | 8.0% | 158,804,000 | 92.0% |
1960 | 204,649,000 | +18.6% | 17,847,000 | 8.7% | 186,721,000 | 91.2% |
1970 | 230,992,000 | +12.9% | 21,374,000 | 9.3% | 209,513,000 | 90.7% |
1980 | 254,007,000 | +10.0% | 24,417,000 | 9.6% | 229,476,000 | 90.3% |
1990 | 279,785,000 | +10.1% | 27,541,000 | 9.8% | 252,120,000 | 90.1% |
2000 | 312,427,000 | +11.7% | 30,588,000 | 9.8% | 281,711,000 | 90.2% |
2010 | 343,287,000 | +9.9% | 34,148,000 | 9.9% | 309,011,000 | 90.0% |
2020 | 368,870,000 | +7.5% | 37,742,000 | 10.2% | 331,003,000 | 89.7% |
The demographic profile of Cameroon is complex for a country of its population. Cameroon comprises an estimated 250 distinct ethnic groups, which may be formed into five large regional-cultural divisions:
North America is a continent in the Northern and Western Hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean. The region includes the Bahamas, Bermuda, Canada, the Caribbean, Central America, Clipperton Island, Greenland, Mexico, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the United States.
Oceania is a geographical region including Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Outside of the English-speaking world, Oceania is generally considered a continent, while Mainland Australia is regarded as its continental landmass. Spanning the Eastern and Western hemispheres, at the centre of the water hemisphere, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of about 9,000,000 square kilometres (3,500,000 sq mi) and a population of around 44.4 million as of 2022. Oceania is the smallest continent in land area and the second-least populated after Antarctica.
A subregion is a part of a larger geographical region or continent. Cardinal directions are commonly used to define subregions. There are many criteria for creating systems of subregions; this article is focusing on the United Nations geoscheme, which is a changing, constantly updated, UN tool based on specific political geography and demography considerations relevant in UN statistics.
The economy of North America comprises more than 596 million people in its 24 sovereign states and 15 dependent territories. It is marked by a sharp division between the predominantly English speaking countries of Canada and the United States, which are among the wealthiest and most developed nations in the world, and countries of Central America and the Caribbean in the former Latin America that are less developed. Mexico and Caribbean nations of the Commonwealth of Nations are between the economic extremes of the development of North America.
Figures for the population of Europe vary according to the particular definition of Europe's boundaries. In 2018, Europe had a total population of over 751 million people. 448 million of them lived in the European Union and 110 million in European Russia; Russia is the most populous country in Europe.
The Americas, also known as America, are lands of the Western Hemisphere, composed of numerous entities and regions variably defined by geography, politics, and culture.
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island countries and 19 dependencies in three archipelagos: the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, and the Lucayan Archipelago.
The United Nations geoscheme is a system which divides 248 countries and territories in the world into six continental regions, 22 geographical subregions, and two intermediary regions. It was devised by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) based on the M49 coding classification. The creators note that "the assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories".
Australasia is a subregion of Oceania, comprising Australia, New Zealand, and sometimes including New Guinea and surrounding islands. The term is used in a number of different contexts, including geopolitically, physiogeographically, philologically, and ecologically, where the term covers several slightly different but related regions.
Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania vary, with it being defined in various ways, often geopolitically or geographically. In the geopolitical conception used by the United Nations, International Olympic Committee, and many atlases, the Oceanic region includes Australia and the nations of the Pacific from Papua New Guinea east, but not the Malay Archipelago or Indonesian New Guinea. The term is sometimes used more specifically to denote Australasia as a geographic continent, or biogeographically as a synonym for either the Australasian realm or the Oceanian realm.