Northern America

Not to be confused with North America or the Northern United States; for other uses, see Northern America (disambiguation)..

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]

Northern America

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	2  Canada  United States
Dependencies	3  Bermuda (United Kingdom)  Greenland (Denmark)  Saint Pierre and Miquelon (France)
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	10 largest cities in Northern America (2015) New York Los Angeles Toronto Chicago Houston Montreal Philadelphia Phoenix San Antonio San Diego
UN M49 code	021 – Northern America 003 – North America 019 – Americas 001 – World

Definitions

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]

Countries and territories

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.

Demographics

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%

See also

• Geography portal
• North America portal

• Americas (terminology)
• Anglo-America
• Caribbean
• Central America
• Middle America
• Southern Cone
• The Nine Nations of North America
• West Indies
• Western world

References

1. "April 2022 GDP Report for Canada and United States". Retrieved 8 August 2022.
2. Gonzalez, Joseph. 2004. "Northern America: Land of Opportunity" (ch. 6). The Complete Idiot's Guide to Geography. (ISBN 1592571883) New York: Alpha Books; pp. 57–8
3. Definition of major areas and regions, from World Migrant Stock: The 2005 Revision Population Database, United Nations Population Division. Accessed on line October 3, 2007.
4. Composition of macro geographical (continental) regions, geographical sub-regions, and selected economic and other groupings, UN Statistics Division. Accessed online October 3, 2007. (French)
5. Bellin, Jacques-Nicolas (n.d.). "Carte de l'Amerique septentrionale (Map of Northern America, 1755)". Library and Archives Canada. Archived from the original on 2007-09-30. Item NMC 21057.
6. Torrey, Barbara Boyle & Eberstadt, Nicholas. 2005 (Aug./Sep.). "The Northern America Fertility Divide Archived 2007-11-07 at the Wayback Machine." Hoover Institution Policy Review. No. 132.
7. Brummitt, R.K. (2001). World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions: Edition 2 (PDF). International Working Group on Taxonomic Databases For Plant Sciences (TDWG). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-01-25. Retrieved 2016-04-06.
8. "World Population Prospects 2022". United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. Retrieved July 17, 2022.
9. "World Population Prospects 2022: Demographic indicators by region, subregion and country, annually for 1950-2100" (XSLX) ("Total Population, as of 1 July (thousands)"). United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. Retrieved July 17, 2022.
10. Unless otherwise noted, land area figures are taken from Demographic Yearbook—Table 3: Population by sex, rate of population increase, surface area and density (PDF) (Report). United Nations Statistics Division. 2008. Retrieved 2010-10-14.
11. Includes the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is distant from the North American landmass in the Pacific Ocean and therefore more commonly associated with the other territories of Oceania.
12. "World Population Prospects". population.un.org. Archived from the original on 2019-08-09. Retrieved 2019-02-24.

External links

• Canada and the United States, by Stephen Azzi and J.L. Granatstein