Hello and welcome to episode 2 of Winners and Losers, in which I'll be looking at the
50 states of America.
Once again, the first category will be size. The largest of the 50 states is... Alaska.
Now looking at a map like this, Alaska doesn't actually look that big. This is because maps
like this don't show Alaska to the same scale as the rest of the states.
In reality, Alaska is much, much bigger than that.
If you were to overlay Alaska's most western point over the San Francisco bay area, its
most eastern point would be around Jacksonville, Florida on the opposite coast.
Alaska comprises 18% of the country's total area, and has nearly double the length of
coastline as the other 49 states combined.
If Alaska were a country, it would be the 20th largest in the world.
And without Alaska, the USA would drop from the 4th to 5th largest country, behind Brazil.
Alaska is larger than the smallest 22 states combined, and is more than double the size
of the 2nd largest state: Texas.
In 3rd place is California, less than a quarter the size of Alaska.
The 3 smallest states are: Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island.
Comparing the largest and smallest states, Alaska is 430 times the size of Rhode Island.
Of course, size is a relative issue. While Rhode Island may seem tiny compared to Alaska,
compared to the 3 smallest countries in the world - Vatican City, Monaco and Nauru - Rhode
Island seems pretty huge.
Even compared to larger countries, like Malta, Singapore and Dominica, Rhode Island still
seems pretty big.
In fact, Rhode Island is larger than 29 independent countries.
Moving onto population now, and in first place is California, home to more than 38 million
people, nearly one eighth the population of the entire country.
California has 3 of the top 10 most populous cities in the United States.
If California were its own country, it would be the 35th most populous.
Once again, Texas takes 2nd place. Texas also has 3 of the country's top 10 most populated
cities, and 6 of the top 20.
But despite this, Texas has about 12 million less people than California.
In 3rd place is New York, which has the most populous city in the USA. Its name-sake, New
York City.
New York City makes up about 43% of the state's population, yet less than 1% of the land area.
New York City is by far the most populous city in the state, with the next most populous
city being Buffalo, the 73rd most populous in the country.
The 3 least populated states are: North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.
California has about 65 times as many people as Wyoming.
California has so many more people than Wyoming, that 15 of California's counties have more
people than the whole state of Wyoming.
California's smallest county by area, San Francisco, at just 122 square kilometres,
has about a quarter million more people than Wyoming, despite Wyoming being about 54 hundred
times larger.
But despite all this, the state of Wyoming has more people than 33 independent countries.
The next category we're going to look at is population density.
The most densely populated state is New Jersey. The 4th smallest, yet 11th most populous state.
This is largely due to the state's close proximity to New York City and Philadelphia: the 1st
and 5th most populous cities in the country.
2nd place goes to smallest state, Rhode Island, and in 3rd place is Massachusetts.
If the whole country were as densely populated as New Jersey, the population of the United
States would be more than 4.2 billion.
The least densely populated states are: Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska.
If the whole country were as sparsely populated as Alaska, the population of the USA would
only be about 4.5 million.
But what if the population densities of the states were less extreme. What if the size
of the states were appropriate for their population.
For example, what if the 15th largest state, was also the 15th most populous. And what
if we did this for every state.
This is how the 50 states would look if their size and population rankings were the same.
I can't help but feel California got the raw end of this deal. You may also notice Rhode
Island, which is now literally an island state.
And only one state stays in the same place. 2nd largest and 2nd most populous: it's Texas.
And now onto homicide rate, and I'll start with the states which have the lowest homicide
rate. And they are: New Hampshire, Vermont and Iowa.
The 3 states with the highest homicide rates, all 3 of which are in the Deep South, are:
Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
In fact, most of the Southern states have a higher than average homicide rate, which
can be seen from this map, in which the darker shades of red represent a higher homicide rate.
Or, if you prefer. Here's a map showing them ranked from 1 to 50.
Now... although this video is about the 50 states, in this category, it's worth mentioning
the nation's capital - Washington DC.
The District of Columbia is its own Federal District, not part of any state. But DC has
a homicide rate higher than that any of the 50 states.
In fact, if the whole of the United States had a homicide rate of its capital city, the
USA would have more anual homicides than any other country in the world.
And sticking with the theme of death, the next category is... suicide rate.
The states with the lowest suicide rates are: New York, New Jersey and Maryland.
The states with the highest suicide rates are: Montana, Wyoming and Alaska.
Now, this bottom 3 may look familiar. That's because this is the exact same bottom 3 as
population density.
It's possible there is a correlation between population density and suicide rate. Here's
Here's a scatter graph showing all 50 states.
And if you remember from episode 1, Greenland had the highest suicide rate of any country,
and was also the least densley populated.
And once again mentioning Washington DC, which has a lower suicide rate than any of the 50
states, and is also more densley populated than any of them as well.
Here's a colour map showing the suicide rates of all the states. And... once again, here
they are ranked in order.
But moving away from death now, and onto Gross Domestic Product, or GDP.
Unsurprisingly, the top 3 are the 3 most populated states. If California were its own country,
it would have the 8th largest economy in the world, with a similar GDP to that of Russia.
This is despite Russia having nearly 4 times the population of California.
Here's a map of all 50 states with a comparable country in terms of GDP.
Now... it's worth noting that this is nominal GDP, and doesn't take population into consideration.
So if we take... Missouri, for example, comparable to Nigeria, both having a GDP of around 250
billion dollars. But Missouri has a population of 6 million, while Nigeria has a population
of 174 million, 29 times that of Missouri.
If you're not too good with flags though, I also made a text version... it doesn't quite
look as good though.
And here's a world map showing the United States and all 50 comparable countries, which
have a combined population of nearly 1.9 billion, 6 times that of the USA.
Now... today, the USA is made up of 50 states. Hence way there's 50 stars on the American
flag. But this wasn't always the case. So what were the very first states... to become states?
Well, the very first state was Delaware, admitted to the Union on December the 7th, 1787.
I know that because it says so on their flag.
The next 2 states were Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
But the very first American flag actually had 13 stars, representing the original 13
colonies that declared independence from the British Empire.
So it could be argued that all 13 of these states were first, since they were all part
of the original United States, even though they all officially became states at different times.
The 13 stripes on the flag has remained constant, again, representing the original 13 colonies,
but the number of stars has changed every time a new state has joined the Union.
Over the years, the US obtained more land through various means, and the number of stars
on the flag kept increasing over time.
In 1912, when New Mexico and Arizona became states, this completed what is today known
as 'the lower 48'.
And for 47 years, the American flag had 48 stars.
The 2 most recent states to join the Union, were Alaska and Hawaii.
Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867, for $7.2 million, which equates to about 2
cents per acre.
$7.2 million in 1867 is equivalent to about $119 million today.
As for Hawaii... Hawaii was its own country for a long time: the Kingdom of Hawaii. And...
very briefly, the Republic of Hawaii.
This was until 1898 when the Hawaiin Islands were annexed into the United States as organized
incorporated territory.
And on August the 21st, 1959, the same year as Alaska, Hawaii became the 50th state, adding
another star and completing what is the current flag of the USA. The 50-star flag has now
been in use for 54 years, making it the longest used flag in the country's history.
Now, the final category I'm going to look at is minimum wage. Minimum wage in the United
States can be a very complex and often controversial issue.
But the states the highest minimum wages are the 3 West Coast states: Washington, Oregon,
and California.
But that doesn't mean that Washinton has the highest minimum wage in the country...
Because some individual cities or counties can set their own minimum wage, the highest
minimum wage in the country is actually San Francisco, with a minimum wage of $10.74.
But these are the minimum wages as of July the 1st, 2014... but several states have passed
bills to increase their minimum wage, to be increased gradually over the next few years.
Now, the Federal Minimum Wage is $7.25, but there are actually 4 states that have a minimum
wage lower than this: Arkansas, Minnesota, Wyoming and Georgia.
Although some states allow even lower minimum wages than this, to small businesses.
For example, in Montana, an employer grossing less than $110,000 annually, can pay its employees
as little as $4 per hour.
But then there's whole issue "tipped staff", which applies to jobs in which the employee
is expected to get regular tips, such as waiters and bartenders.
For tipped staff, the minimum wage can be as low as $2.13 per hour in many states, where
staff are expected to make the rest of their paycheck through customer tips.
Although not all states pay tipped staff less than other workers... there are 7 states that
apply the exact same minimum wage to tipped staff as they do to other workers.
Well, that's all for episode 2 of Winners and Losers... and feel free to leave your
suggestion for episode 3. Thanks for watching.