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United States of America
Flag Great Seal
Motto: "In God We Trust"  (since 1956) Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)  ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner
Capital	Washington, D.C.
Largest city	New York City
National language	English (de facto)
Government	Federal constitutional republic
• President	George W. Bush (R)
• Vice President	Dick Cheney (R)
• Speaker of The House	Nancy Pelosi (D)
• Chief Justice	John Roberts
Independence from Great Britain
• Declared	July 4 1776
• Water (%)	4.87
Population
• 2025 estimate	339,086,000 (3rd)
• 2000 census	281,421,906
GDP (PPP)	2005 estimate
• Total	$12,229,276 (1st)
• Per capita	$43,444 (4th)
GDP (nominal)	2005 estimate
• Total	$13,244,550 (1st)
• Per capita	$44,190 (9th)
Gini (2000)	40.8 medium inequality
HDI (2004)	0.948 Error: Invalid HDI value (8th)
Currency	United States dollar ($) (USD)
Time zone	UTC-5 to -10
• Summer (DST)	UTC-4 to -10
Calling code	1
ISO 3166 code	US
Internet TLD	.us .gov .edu .mil
English is the de facto language of American government; Spanish is the second most common. English, Spanish, French, Carolinian, Chamorro, Hawaiian and Samoan are officially recognized by various states and territories. Sometimes listed as fourth largest in area; the rank is disputed with China (PRC).

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic made up of fifty states, one federal district, and several territories. The country is situated largely in the western hemisphere: its forty-eight contiguous states and the District of Columbia (coextensive with Washington, the capital) lie in central North America between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south; the state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent with Canada to its east, and the state of Hawaii is in the mid-Pacific. U.S. territories, or insular areas, are scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific.

At over 3.7 million square miles (over 9.6 million km²) and with more than 300 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and third largest by land area and population. A liberal democracy, the U.S. is one of the world's most ethnically and socially diverse nations. American society is the product of large-scale immigration, resulting in a complex social structure. Its national economy is the world's largest, with a nominal 2005 gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $13 trillion.

The nation was founded by thirteen colonies of Great Britain located along the Atlantic seaboard. Proclaiming themselves "states," they issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Britain, defeated in the American Revolutionary War, recognized their sovereignty in 1783. A federal convention adopted the current United States Constitution on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic. Ten constitutional amendments composing the Bill of Rights were ratified in 1791. The country greatly expanded throughout the nineteenth century, acquiring territory from France, Spain, Mexico, and Russia, while annexing the Republic of Texas and the former Kingdom of Hawaii. The American Civil War of the 1860s ended the slavery of millions of descendants of kidnapped Africans. By the turn of the twentieth century, the United States was a great power. With its development of nuclear weapons, the U.S. emerged from World War II as one of two global superpowers, along with the Soviet Union. The Soviet collapse in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. It remains the dominant economic, political, military, and cultural force in the Western world and around the globe.

Etymology

Common abbreviations of the United States of America include the United States, the U.S., and the U.S.A. America is the most popular colloquialism, while the States is also sometimes used informally. U.S. of A. is occasionally used in other English-speaking countries. The earliest known use of the name America is attributed to German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller; in 1507, working in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, he created a globe and a large map showing North and South America. According to the Library of Congress, "Waldseemüller christened the new lands 'America' in recognition of Amerigo Vespucci’s understanding that a new continent had been uncovered as a result of the voyages of Columbus and other explorers in the late fifteenth century."

The Americas were also known as Columbia, after Columbus, prompting the name District of Columbia for the land set aside for the U.S. capital. Columbia remained a popular name for the United States until the early twentieth century, when it fell into relative disuse. It is still employed poetically, and appears in various names and titles. One female personification of the country is called Columbia.

The full name of the country was first used officially in the Declaration of Independence, which was the "unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America" adopted by the "Representatives of the united States of America" on July 4, 1776. On November 15, 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first of which stated "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America.'"

The most common adjectival and demonymic form for the United States is American. This term is used to designate U.S. citizens ("Americans") and to identify cultural characteristics ("American values," "American sports"). It is rarely used in English to refer to people not connected to the U.S. This common use of "American" has aroused controversy, particularly in Latin America, where Spanish and Portuguese speakers refer to themselves as "americanos" and use the adjective "estadounidense" to describe a person from the United States.

Geography

The United States is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area, before or after the People's Republic of China, depending on whether or not one counts two territories governed by China but claimed by India. When counting only land area it falls behind Russia and China and just ahead of Canada. The continental United States stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and from Canada to Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico. Alaska is the largest state in area. Separated by Canada, it touches the Pacific and Arctic Oceans. Hawaii occupies an archipelago in the Pacific, southwest of North America. Deciduous vegetation and grasslands prevail in the eastern U.S., transitioning to prairies, boreal forests, and the Rocky Mountains in the west, and deserts in the southwest. In the northeast, the coasts of the Great Lakes and Atlantic seaboard host much of the country's population. Barring exceptions such as the territory of Guam and the westernmost portions of Alaska, nearly all of the country lies in the western hemisphere.

Beyond the coastal plain, the rolling hills of the Piedmont region end at the Appalachian Mountains, which rise above 6,000 feet (1,830 m) in North Carolina, Tennessee, and New Hampshire. From the west slope of the Appalachians, the Interior Plains of the Midwest are relatively flat and are the location of the Great Lakes as well as the Mississippi-Missouri River, the world's 4th longest river system. West of the Mississippi River, the Interior Plains slope uphill and blend into the vast and often featureless Great Plains. The Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the continental U.S., reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,270 m) in Colorado. Active volcanoes are common throughout the Alexander and Aleutian Islands and the entire state of Hawaii is built upon tropical volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is possibly the world's largest volcano.

Due to its large size and wide range of geographic features, the United States contains examples of nearly every type of climate. The climate is temperate in most areas, tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida, polar in Alaska, semiarid in the Great Plains west of the 100th meridian, desert in the Southwest, mediterranean in coastal California, and arid in the Great Basin. Extreme weather is not uncommon, as the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes and most of the world's tornadoes occur within the continental United States. That said, the predominantly temperate climate, infrequent severe drought in the major arable regions, and infrequent severe flooding have helped make the nation a world leader in agriculture.

Environment

With habitats ranging from tropical to arctic, the flora of the U.S. are very diverse. The U.S. has more than 17,000 identified native plant and tree species, including 5,000 just in California (which is home to the tallest, the most massive, and the oldest trees in the world). More than 400 species of mammal, 700 species of bird, 500 species of reptile and amphibian, and 90,000 species of insect have been documented. Wetlands such as the Florida Everglades are the base for much of this diversity. The country's flora and fauna include thousands of nonnative exotic species that sometimes adversely affect indigenous plant and animal communities. The U.S. passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973 to protect threatened and endangered animal and plant species and their habitats, which are monitored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In 1872, the world's first national park was established at Yellowstone. Another fifty-seven national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks and forests have since been designated. In some parts of the country, wilderness areas have been established to ensure long-term protection of pristine habitats. Altogether, the U.S. government regulates 1,020,779 square miles (2,643,807 km²), which is 28.8 percent of the total land area of the U.S. The bulk of this land is protected park and forestland, but some is leased for oil and natural gas drilling, mining, and cattle ranching. The Energy policy of the United States is a matter of heated debate; many citizens and foreign nations call on the U.S. to take a leading role in fighting global warming, as they are the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

History

Native Americans and European settlers

The indigenous peoples of the North American territory that now constitutes the United States mainland, including Alaska, migrated from Asia. Primarily traversing the Bering land bridge, they came over a period that began as many as 35,000 years ago and ended approximately 11,000 years ago. Several indigenous communities in the pre-Columbian era developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. European explorer Christopher Columbus arrived at Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493, making first contact with the Native Americans. In the years that followed, the majority of the Native American population was killed by epidemics of Eurasian diseases.

Florida was home to the earliest European colonies on the mainland; of these only St. Augustine, founded in 1565, remains. French fur traders set up small outposts called New France near the Great Lakes. Later Spanish settlements in the Southwestern United States drew thousands through Mexico. The first successful British settlements were the Virginia Colony at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, and the 1620 Pilgrims settlement at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Between 1614, the Netherlands settled parts of New York and New Jersey, including New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. Sweden settled New Sweden (in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania), which then passed to the Dutch. Several colonies were used by the British as penal settlements from the 1620s until the American Revolution.

In the French and Indian War, the colonial extension of the Seven Years War, Britain seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. By 1674, the British had won the former Dutch colonies in the Anglo-Dutch Wars. With the 1729 division of the Carolinas and the 1732 colonization of Georgia, the Thirteen Colonies that became the United States of America in 1776 were established. All had active local and colonial governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self government that stimulated support for republicanism. All had legalized the African slave trade. With high birth rates, low death rates, and steady immigration, the colonies doubled in population every twenty-five years. By 1770, the colonies had an increasingly Anglicized population of three million, approximately half that of Britain. Though subject to British taxation, they were given no representation in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Independence and expansion

Tensions between American colonials and the British during the revolutionary period of the 1760s and 1770s led to open warfare from 1775 through 1781. George Washington commanded the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War as the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The Congress created the Continental Army, but was handicapped in its ability to fund it by lack of authority to levy taxes; instead, it over-printed paper money triggering hyperinflation. During the conflict, some seventy thousand loyalists to the British Crown fled the new nation, with some fifty thousand United Empire Loyalist refugees fleeing to Nova Scotia and the new British holdings in Canada. Native American loyalties were likewise divided; Cherokees and several other peoples split into factions fighting on both sides on the western front.

In 1777, the Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, uniting the states under a weak federal government, which operated until 1788. After the defeat of Great Britain, dissatisfaction with the weak national government led to a constitutional convention in 1787. By June 1788, enough states had ratified the United States Constitution to establish the new government, which took office in 1789. The Constitution, which strengthened the union and the federal government, is still the supreme law of the land. Attitudes towards slavery shifted in this time, leading to a clause in the Constitution ending the African slave trade. All Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, differentiating themselves from the remaining slave states. Fighting with the Chickamauga loyalist faction of the Cherokees began a cycle of Indian Wars with the fledgling U.S. government that stretched to the end of the next century.

From 1803 to 1848, the size of the new nation nearly tripled as settlers (many embracing the concept of Manifest Destiny as an inevitable consequence of American exceptionalism) pushed beyond national boundaries even before the Louisiana Purchase. The expansion was tempered somewhat by the stalemate in the War of 1812, but it was subsequently reinvigorated by victory in the Mexican-American War in 1848, and the prospect of gold during the California Gold Rush (1848-1849).

Between 1830–1880, up to 40 million American Bison, commonly called Buffalo, were slaughtered for skins and meat, and to aid railway expansion. The expansion of the railways reduced transit times for both goods and people, made westward expansion less arduous for the pioneers, and increased conflicts with the Native Americans regarding the land and its uses. The loss of the bison, a primary resource for the plains Indians, added to the pressures on native cultures and individuals for survival.

Civil War and Reconstruction

As new territories were being incorporated, the nation was divided on the issue of states' rights, the role of the federal government, and the expansion of slavery, which had been legal in all thirteen colonies but was rarer in the north, where it was abolished by 1804. The Northern states were opposed to the expansion of slavery whereas the Southern states saw the opposition as an attack on their way of life, since their economy was dependent on slave labor. The failure to resolve these issues led to the American Civil War, following the secession of many slave states in the South to form the Confederate States of America after the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln. The 1865 Union victory in the Civil War effectively ended slavery and settled the question of whether a state had the right to secede. The event was a major turning point in American history and resulted in an increase in federal power.

The end of the war was marked by the Abraham Lincoln assassination and Radical Republican attempts to assimilate the South. Their Reconstruction policies ended in the late 1870s as Jim Crow laws began to disenfranchise the newly freed slaves. In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants hastened the country's industrialization. Immigrants helped to provide labor for American industry and create diverse communities in undeveloped areas while high tariff protections, national infrastructure building and national banking regulations encouraged industrial growth. The growing power of the United States enabled it to acquire new territories, including the annexation of Puerto Rico and the Philippines after victory in the Spanish-American War, which marked the debut of the United States as a major world power.

World Wars and The Great Depression

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the United States remained neutral. American sympathies favored the British and French, although many citizens, mostly Irish and German, were opposed to intervention. In 1917, however, the United States joined the Triple Entente, helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers. After the war, the Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles because of a fear that it would pull the United States into European affairs. Instead, the country continued to pursue its policy of unilateralism that bordered at times on isolationism.

During most of the 1920s, the United States enjoyed a period of unbalanced prosperity as farm profits fell while industrial profits grew. A rise in debt and an inflated stock market culmination in a crash in 1929, combined with the Dust Bowl, triggered the Great Depression. After his election as President in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched his New Deal policies increasing government intervention in the economy in response to the Great Depression. The nation would not fully recover from the economic depression until its industrial mobilization related to entering World War II.

On December 7, 1941 the United States was driven to join the Allies against the Axis Powers after a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan. World War II had a greater economic cost than any in American history, but it helped to pull the economy out of depression by providing much-needed jobs and putting many women to work for the first time. After achieving victory in Europe, the United States developed the first nuclear weapons and used them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 to avoid a dangerous land-invasion. The Surrender of Japan followed on September 2, 1945, ending the war.

Communism and terrorism

After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union became superpowers in an era of ideological rivalry dubbed the Cold War. They dominated military affairs in Europe through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact. The United States officially promoted liberal democracy and capitalism, while the Soviet Union officially promoted communism and a centrally planned economy. Both sides sometimes supported dictatorships when politically convenient and engaged in proxy wars, including the Korean War and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. As the Communist Party in the Eastern Bloc suppressed dissent, American anti-communists like Joseph McCarthy attempted and failed to suppress their opposition at home.

The Soviet Union launched the first manned spacecraft in 1961, prompting efforts to raise proficiency in mathematics and science in American schools and President John F. Kennedy's call for the United States to be first to land "a man on the moon", achieved in 1969. Kennedy also faced a tense nuclear showdown with Soviet forces in Cuba. Meanwhile, America experienced a period of sustained economic expansion. A growing civil-rights movement headed by prominent African Americans such as Martin Luther King, Jr. fought racism, leading to the abolition of the Jim Crow laws in the South and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, his successors expanded a proxy war in Vietnam into the unsuccessful Vietnam War. After withdrawing from Vietnam, President Richard Nixon became the first President to resign, rather than be impeached over electoral fraud allegations during the Watergate scandal.

When the Soviet Union collapsed and Russian power diminished in the late 1980s and 1990s, the United States continued to intervene in overseas military conflicts. The leadership role taken by the United States and its allies in the United Nations-sanctioned Gulf War and the Yugoslav wars helped to preserve its position as the world's last remaining superpower and to expand NATO. On September 11, 2001, terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York City and The Pentagon near Washington, D.C. killed nearly three thousand people. In the aftermath, President George W. Bush launched a new War on Terrorism and the Bush Doctrine, stressing preemptive war. His administration led a NATO invasion of Afghanistan removing the Taliban government and al-Qaeda terrorist training camps. As of 2007, a Taliban insurgency continues to fight a guerrilla war against the NATO occupation force.

In his 2002 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush labeled North Korea, Iraq and Iran the "axis of evil," and stated that these countries "constitute a grave threat to the security of the U.S. and its allies." Later that year, the Bush administration pressed for regime change in Iraq on controversial grounds. In 2003, a Coalition of the Willing invaded Iraq, removing President Saddam Hussein. Although facing both external and internal pressure to withdraw, the United States continues to occupy Iraq.

Government and politics

The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, a representative democracy with a government regulated by a system of checks and balances defined by the United States Constitution. The 1789 constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation, which was in effect from 1781 – 1789. However, it is "not a simple representative democracy, but a constitutional republic in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law." Citizens are usually subject to three levels of government, at federal, state, and local levels, although most areas are also subject to multiple local governments, such as county or metropolitan governments in addition to municipal government. Officials at all three levels are either elected by voters in a secret ballot or appointed by other elected officials. Executive and legislative offices are decided by a plurality vote of citizens in their respective districts. Judicial and cabinet-level offices are nominated by the Executive branch and approved by the Legislature in the federal government and most states, although some state judges are elected by popular vote.

The federal government comprises three branches, which are designed to check and balance one another's powers:

• Legislative: The bicameral Congress, made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives, which makes federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse, and has the rarely used power of impeachment, by which it can remove sitting members of the government.

• Executive: The President, who appoints, with Senate approval, the Cabinet and other officers, who administers and enforces federal law, can veto bills, and is Commander in Chief of the military.

• Judiciary: The Supreme Court and lower federal courts, whose judges are appointed by the President with Senate approval, which interpret laws and can overturn laws they deem unconstitutional.

The United States Constitution is the supreme legal document in the American system, and serves as a social contract for the people of the United States, regulating their affairs through government chosen by and populated by the people. All laws and procedures of both state and federal governments are subject to review, and any law ruled by the judicial branch to be in violation of the Constitution is overturned. The Constitution can be amended by two methods, both of which require the approval of three-fourths of the states. The Constitution has been amended 27 times, the last time in 1992.

The Constitution contains a 27 amendments, including the 1791 Bill of Rights, which guarantee freedom of speech, religion, and the press; the right to a fair trial; the right to keep and bear arms; universal suffrage; and property rights. However, the extent to which these rights are protected and universal in practice is heavily debated. The Constitution also guarantees to every State "a Republican Form of Government". However, the meaning of that guarantee has been only slightly explicated. The Constitution also defines term limits for the President and the size of the Congress. The House of Representatives has 435 members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states according to population every tenth year. As of the 2000 census, seven states have the minimum of one representative; California, the most populous state, has fifty-three. Each state has two senators, elected at-large to six-year terms; one third of Senate seats are up for election every second year.

American politics is dominated by the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Members of these two parties hold the overwhelming majority of elected offices across the country at federal, state, and lower levels. Independent or third party candidates tend to do better in lower-level elections, although there are currently two independent members of the Senate. Within American political culture the Republican Party is considered "center-right" or conservative and the Democratic Party is considered "center-left" or liberal. The size of both parties allows for considerable divergence of views within both parties. Since 2001, the President has been George W. Bush, a Republican. Following the 2006 mid-term elections, the Democratic Party holds a majority of seats in both the House and Senate for the first time since 1994.

Foreign relations and military

The United States has vast economic, political, and military influence on a global scale, which makes its foreign policy a subject of great interest and discussion around the world. Almost all countries have embassies in Washington, D.C., and many host consulates around the country. Likewise, nearly all nations host American diplomatic missions. However, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, and Sudan do not have formal diplomatic relations with the United States.

American isolationists have often found itself at odds with internationalists and those that promoted manifest destiny and American Empire. American imperialism in the Philippines drew sharp rebuke from Mark Twain and many other noted citizens. Later, President Woodrow Wilson played a key role in creating the League of Nations, but the Senate prohibited American membership in it. Isolationism became a thing of the past, however, when the United States took a lead role in founding the United Nations, becoming a permanent member of the Security Council, and host to the United Nations headquarters. America's principal allies include the NATO member states as well as Australia, Japan, and Israel. America enjoys a special relationship with the United Kingdom, its closest ally. Additionally, the United States enjoys close ties to its neighbors through the Organization of American States and free trade agreements such as the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico.

The President, who also holds the title of Commander in Chief, commands the nation's armed forces and appoints its leaders, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense. The United States Department of Defense administers the U.S. armed forces, which comprise the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Air Force. The Coast Guard falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime but is placed under the Department of the Navy in times of war. The military of the United States comprises 1.4 million personnel on active duty, along with several hundred thousand each in the Reserves and the National Guard. Service in the military is voluntary, though conscription may occur in times of war through the Selective Service System. The rapid deployment of American forces is ensured in part by the Air Force's large fleet of transportation aircraft and aerial refueling tankers, the Navy's fleet of eleven active aircraft carriers, and Marine Expeditionary Units at sea in the Navy's Atlantic and Pacific Fleets.

The military budget of the United States in 2005 was estimated to be greater than the next fourteen largest national military budgets combined. That said, the military budget of over $470 billion dollars is only about 4 percent of GDP, which is less than the budget of 26 other nations. The Department of Defense employs 2,338,213 troops and over 800,000 civilian employees, disregarding contractors. The U.S. military is deployed to more than 700 bases and facilities, on every continent except Antarctica. Due to the sheer size of their global military presence, scholars accuse the United States of maintaining an "empire of bases."

Economy

The United States has a capitalist mixed economy. Although private organizations constitute the bulk of the economy, government activity accounts for 12.4 percent of the GDP. Most businesses in the U.S. are not corporations but sole proprietorships with no payroll. Both the regulatory burden on its companies and its social safety net are smaller than in most developed nations. The United States GDP of more than $13 trillion constitutes 22 percent of the gross world product. The nation ranks as the third or eighth highest GDP per capita, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The economy is fueled by an abundance in natural resources, well-developed infrastructure, and high productivity. Americans tend to work considerably more hours annually, take less vacation, and produce more an hour than workers in other developed nations. In 2005, 155 million persons were employed with earnings, of whom 80 percent worked in full-time jobs. The majority, 79 percent, are employed in the service sector.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). The United States is the largest importer of goods and second largest exporter. Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, and Germany are its top five trading partners.

Income and social class

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household incomes ranged from $33,000 in West Virginia to $57,000 in New Hampshire, with an overall national median of $46,000 and 42% of households having two or more income earners. Using purchasing power parity exchange rates, these income levels are similar to those found in other post-industrial nations such as Switzerland ($54,000), and the United Kingdom. ($39,000) In 2005, the median income for an individual age twenty-five or older in the labor force with earnings was $32,000 while the median income per household member was $24,000. Income inequality in the United States has increased since the 1970s, although the standard of living has increased for nearly all classes. The share of income held by the top 1 percent has increased considerably while the share of income of the bottom 90 percent has fallen, with the gap between the two groups being roughly as large in 2005 as in 1928. Some economists, such as Alan Greenspan, see rising income inequality as a cause for concern.

American social classes lack clearly defined boundaries and overlap, but sociologists point to social class as the perhaps most important societal variable. Occupation, educational attainment and income are used as the main indicators of socio-economic status. Sociology Dennis Gilbert of Hamilton College has proposed a system, adapted by other sociologists, with six social classes. He identified an upper, or capitalist, class consisting of the wealthy and powerful (1%), an upper middle class consisting of highly educated professionals (15%), a middle class consisting of semi-professionals and craftsmen (33%), a working class consisting of clerical and blue-collar workers (33%), and two lower classes: the working poor (13%) and an underclass (12%). The former consists of service and low-rung blue collar workers and the latter of those who do not participate in the labor force.

Historically, the United States has enjoyed a reputation as a nation with high levels of social mobility. This American Dream played a key role in attracting immigrants after the Civil war. The actual level of social mobility relative to that of other countries is an issue of debate. Though some analysts have found the U.S. to have relatively low social mobility compared to Western Europe and Canada, others point out that bottom-quintile households are more likely to rise to the top fifth than to remain near the bottom.

Technology

The United States is now one of the most influential countries in scientific and technological research and the production of innovative technological products. The bulk of Research and Development funding, 69 percent, comes voluntarily from the private sector. During World War II, the U.S. led the Allied program to develop the atomic bomb, ushering in the atomic age. The Space Race, led to rapid advances in rocketry, material science, computers, and many other areas. The U.S. was also the most instrumental nation in the development of the Internet, while also developing its predecessor, Arpanet. The U.S. produces the largest percentage of scientific research papers of any country. Many scientists immigrate to the United States, including Albert Einstein. The U.S. enjoys a very high levels of access to technological consumer goods such as TVs, PCs, and radios. In part because of their low population density, the United States has always been a leader among automakers, and is home to more roadways than any other country. Although public transport systems are heavily used in some large cities, these systems tend to be less extensive than in other developed nations.

Demographics

On October 17 2006 at 7:46 a.m. EST, the United States' population stood at an estimated 300,000,000. This figure excludes persons living in the U.S. without legal permission to do so. Due to the nation's size any population estimate needs to be seen as a somewhat rough figure, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. According to the 2000 census, about 79 percent of the population lived in urban areas. The United States has a highly diverse population, being home to 31 ethnic groups with more than a million members. Among racial demographics, whites, who are of European ancestry, remained the largest racial group with German-Americans, Irish-Americans and English-Americans constituting the three largest ancestry groups. The percentages of whites among the general population is, however, declining. African Americans, who are largely the descendants of former slaves, constituted the nation's largest racial and third largest ethnic minority. The Native American minority won United States citizenship in the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, in part due to pressure to assimilate them into mainstream American culture, and in part because of their service in the First World War. According to the 2003 census estimates, there are 2,786,652 Native Americans in the United States.

Demographic trends include the immigration of Hispanics from Latin America into the Southwest, a region that is home to about 60 percent of the 35 million Hispanics in the United States. Immigrants from Mexico make up about 66 percent of the Hispanic community and are the second largest ethnic group in the country. It is estimated that with current population trends non-Hispanic Whites will become a plurality by 2040 to 2050. In the four "majority-minority states" such as California, New Mexico, Hawaii and Texas such is already the case. Crime in the United States is characterized by relatively high levels of gun violence and homicide, compared to other developed countries. Its drug policy is a source of heated argument, and is largely responsible for a high incarceration rate among minority groups.

In 2005, 254 incorporated places in the U.S. had populations greater than 100,000, nine cities had populations greater than one million, and four global cities had populations greater than 2 million (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston). The United States has 54 metropolitan areas with populations greater than one million. The South Florida metropolitan area (Miami and Ft. Lauderdale) and the Washington Metropolitan Area, (Washington, Baltimore, & Arlington) rank among the largest metropolitan areas while none of their member cities rank in the top ten.

Language and religion

Although the United States has no official language at the federal level, English is the de facto national language. In 2003, about 215 million, or 82 percent of the population aged five years and older, spoke only English at home. Spanish, spoken by over 10% of the population at home, is the only other language used at home by more than 1% of the population. Knowledge of English is required of immigrants seeking naturalization. Spanish is the second most spoken language and the most widely taught foreign language. Some Americans advocate making English the official language, which is the law in twenty-five states. Hawaiian is granted official status in Hawaii by the Constitution of Hawaii Several insular territories also grant official recognition to their native languages: Samoan and Chamorro are recognized by Samoa and Guam, respectively; Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized by the Northern Mariana Islands, and Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico. In the states of New Mexico and Louisiana there is no official language. However, New Mexico issues government documents in both Spanish and English, and Louisiana legally recognizes the French language.

The United States government keeps no official register of Americans' religious status. However, in a private survey conducted in 2001 and mentioned in the Census Bureau's Statistical Abstract of the United States, 76.7 percent of American adults identified themselves as Christian; about 52 percent of adults described themselves as members of various Protestant denominations. Roman Catholics, at 24.5 percent, were the most populous individual denomination. Other faiths in America include Judaism (1.4 percent), Islam (0.5 percent), Buddhism (0.5 percent), Hinduism (0.4 percent) and Unitarian Universalism (0.3 percent). About 14.2 percent of respondents described themselves as having no religion. Although the total U.S. population grew by 18.5 percent between 1990 and 2001, 13 religious groups declined in absolute numbers, while 20 groups more than doubled in number.

Education and health

Education in the United States is a combination of public and private entities. Public education is the responsibility of state and local governments, rather than the federal government. The Department of Education of the federal government, however, exerts some influence through its ability to control funding. Students are generally obliged to attend school starting with kindergarten, and ending with the 12th grade, which is normally completed at age 18; some states allow students to drop out as early as age 16. Parents may also choose to educate their own children at home or to send their children to parochial or private schools. The United Nations assigned an Education Index of 99.9 to the United States, tieing it with twenty other nations for the highest score. The United States has a basic literacy rate of approximately 99 percent. Of Americans aged 25 and up, 84.6 percent have graduated high school and 27.2 percent have earned a bachelor's degree or higher. There are many competitive institutions of higher education in the United States, both private and public. The United States has 168 universities in the world's top 500, 17 of which are in the top 20. There are also many smaller universities and liberal arts colleges, and local community colleges of varying quality across the country with open admission policies.

The American life expectancy of seventy-eight years at birth is a year shorter than the overall figure in Western Europe, and three to four years lower than that of Norway and Switzerland. The infant mortality rate of 6.37 per thousand places the U.S. 41st out of of 221 countries, likewise behind most of Western Europe. Approximately one-third of the adult American population is obese and an additional third is overweight; the obesity rate, which has more than doubled in the last quarter-century, is the highest in the industrialized world. Obesity-related diabetes mellitus type 2 is considered epidemic by healthcare professionals.

The United States healthcare system far outspends any other nation's, measured in both per capita spending and percentage of GDP. Unlike most developed countries, the U.S. healthcare system is not fully publicly funded, instead relying on a mix of public and private funding. In 2004, private insurance paid for 36 percent of personal health expenditure, private out-of-pocket payments covered 15 percent, and federal, state, and local governments paid for 44 percent. Medical bills are the most common reason for personal bankruptcy in the United States. In 2005, 41.2 million people in the U.S. (14.2 percent of the population) were uninsured for at least part of the year. Many of these people may have been between jobs for part of the year, leaving a gap in employer-provided health insurance. Approximately one third of those 41.2 million lived in households with annual incomes greater than $50,000, with half of those having an income of greater than $75,000. Another third were eligible for public health insurance programs but were not signed up for them.

Culture

The United States is a culturally diverse nation, home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values. The culture held in common by the majority of Americans is referred to as "mainstream American culture," a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Western European migrants, beginning with the early English and Dutch settlers. German, Scottish, and Irish cultures have also been very influential. Certain Native American traditions and many cultural characteristics of enslaved West Africans were absorbed into the American mainstream. Westward expansion brought close contact with the culture of Mexico, and large-scale immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from Southern and Eastern Europe introduced many new cultural elements. More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has had broad impact. The resulting mix of cultures may be characterized as a homogeneous melting pot or as a pluralistic salad bowl in which immigrants and their descendants retain distinctive cultural characteristics.

While American culture maintains the myth that the U.S. is a classless society, economists and sociologists have identified cultural differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values. The American middle and professional class has been the source of many contemporary social trends such as feminism, environmentalism, and multiculturalism. Americans' self-images, social viewpoints, and cultural expectations are associated with their occupations to an unusually close degree. While Americans tend to greatly value socioeconomic achievement, being ordinary or average is generally seen as a positive attribute. Women, formerly limited to domestic roles, now mostly work outside the home and receive a majority of bachelor's degrees. The changing role of women has also changed the American family. In 2005, no household arrangement defined more than 30 percent of households; married childless couples were most common, at 28 percent. The extension of marital rights to homosexual persons is an issue of debate, with more liberal states permitting civil unions and Massachusetts recently having legalized same-sex marriage.

Popular media

In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated the power of photography to capture motion. In 1894, the world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City, using the Kinetoscope commissioned by Thomas Edison. The first commercial screening of a projected film came the following year, also in New York, and the U.S. was in the forefront of the development of sound film in the following decades. Since the early twentieth century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, California. The major film studios of Hollywood are the primary source of the most commercially successful movies in the world, such as Star Wars (1977) and Titanic (1997). American screen actors like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood have become iconic figures, while producer/entrepreneur Walt Disney was a leader in both animated film and movie merchandising. Director Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited in critics' polls as the greatest film of all time. The products of American cinema and other mass media now appear in nearly every nation.

Americans are the heaviest television viewers in the world, averaging twenty-eight hours a week in front of their screens. The four major broadcast television networks—CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox—are all privately owned by large media conglomerates. There are three minor national broadcast networks—the privately owned CW and My Network and the cooperatively owned, publicly funded PBS—as well as hundreds of cable and satellite stations. Radio is also largely commercialized. Newspaper circulation is in decline, though dailies such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal remain important. Newspaper comic strips and comic books are both U.S. innovations.

The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African American music have deeply influenced American music at large, distinguishing it from European traditions. Since the late nineteenth century, American popular music of various genres has attracted audiences across the globe. Jazz and later country music, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll developed in the United States, evolving out of older forms such as the blues and American folk music. More recent American creations include funk and hip hop music. American pop stars such as Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna have become global celebrities. Composers Aaron Copeland and George Gershwin created a unique American synthesis of popular and classical music. Modern musical form emerged on Broadway, where the songs of Irving Berlin and Cole Porter became pop standards.

Literature and the arts

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe. Writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau established a distinctive American literary voice by the middle of the nineteenth century. Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century's second half; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, would be recognized as America's other essential poet. Later American writers have been much honored: U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature eleven times, most recently Toni Morrison in 1993. Ernest Hemingway, the 1954 Nobel laureate, is often named as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. The "great American novel" is a label sometimes given to a celebrated book regarded as capturing fundamental aspects of the national experience and character. The term has been used to describe such works as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925). Popular literary genres such as the Western and hardboiled crime fiction developed in the United States.

The other classical arts did not establish distinctive American expressions until the twentieth century, though the Hudson River School was an important visual art movement in the mid-nineteenth century. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. visual art scene. American painters and sculptors, like their European counterparts, began experimenting with new styles and displaying a more individualistic sensibility. Georgia O'Keefe and Marsden Hartley were among the first leading artists to demonstrate this development. Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollack and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein developed largely in the United States. The tide of modernism and then post-modernism also brought American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry to the top of their field. Though largely overlooked at the time, Charles Ives's work of the 1910s established him as the first major U.S. composer in the classical tradition; other experimentalists such as Henry Cowell and John Cage created an identifiably American approach to classical composition. Choreographers George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Martha Graham were among the leading figures of twentieth-century dance. The U.S. has long been at the fore in the relatively modern artistic medium of photography, with major practitioners such as Alfred Steiglitz, Edward Steichen, Ansel Adams, and many others.

Food and clothing

American culinary arts are similar to those in other Western countries, especially northwestern Europe. Wheat is the primary cereal grain. Traditional American cuisine uses ingredients such as turkey, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, squash, and maple syrup, indigenous foods employed by Native Americans and early European settlers. Slow-cooked pork and beef barbecue and chocolate chip cookies are distinctively American styles. Soul food, which originated among African slaves, is especially popular in the South. Fried chicken, which combines Scottish and African-American culinary traditions, is a national favorite. Iconic American dishes such as apple pie, pizza, and hamburgers derive from the recipes of various European immigrants. So-called French fries, Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos, and pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian sources are widely consumed. Fusion cuisine, in which aspects of different cuisines are openly mixed, and modern California cuisine, popularized by chefs such as Wolfgang Puck, are leading upscale trends. Asian restaurants are the fastest-growing chain category. During the last two decades of the twentieth century, Americans' daily caloric intake rose 24 percent, as the share of that intake from food consumed outside the home went from 18 to 32 percent. Fast food outlets such as McDonald's are a primary source for this consumption. These trends are closely associated with what government researchers characterize as the American "obesity epidemic." The popularity of well-promoted diets such as the Atkins Nutritional Approach has sent sales of "carb-conscious" processed food soaring. Though organic food purchases have risen steadily in the last two decades, they still represent only 2 percent of retail food sales, significantly less than in other Western countries.

Americans generally prefer coffee to tea, with more than half the adult population drinking at least one cup a day. American liquors include bourbon and Tennessee whiskey, applejack, and Puerto Rican rum. The martini is the characteristic American cocktail. The average American consumes 81.6 liters of beer per year. American-style lagers, typified by the leading Budweiser brand, are light in body and flavor; Budweiser owner Anheuser-Busch controls 50 percent of the national beer market. In recent decades, wine production and consumption has increased substantially, with winemaking now a leading industry in California. Wine is often drunk before meals, substituting for cocktails. Aside from coffee, orange juice and homogenized, often fat-reduced cow's milk are typical breakfast beverages. Highly sweetened soft drinks are widely popular; sugared beverages now account for 9 percent of the average American's daily caloric intake, more than double the rate three decades ago. Leading soft-drink producer Coca-Cola is the most recognized brand in the world, just ahead of McDonald's.

Apart from professional business attire, U.S. fashions are eclectic and predominantly informal. While Americans' diverse cultural roots are reflected in their clothing, particularly those of recent immigrants, cowboy hats and boots and leather motorcycle jackets are emblematic of specifically American styles. Blue jeans were popularized as work clothes in the 1850s by merchant Levi Strauss, a German immigrant in San Francisco, and adopted by many American teenagers a century later. They are now widely worn on every continent by people of all ages and social classes. Along with mass-marketed informal wear in general, blue jeans are arguably U.S. culture's primary contribution to global fashion. The country is also home to the headquarters of many leading designer labels such as Ralph Lauren, Eddie Bauer, and Calvin Klein. Labels such as Abercrombie & Fitch and Eckō cater to various niche markets.

Sports

Since the late nineteenth century, baseball has been regarded as the national pastime; football, basketball, and ice hockey are the country's three other leading professional team sports. Football is now by some measures the most popular spectator sport in the United States. Boxing and horse racing were once the most watched individual sports, but they have been eclipsed by golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR. Soccer, though not a leading professional sport in the country, is participated in widely at the youth and amateur levels. Tennis and many outdoor sports are also popular. While most major U.S. sports have evolved out of European practices, basketball was invented in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the regionally popular lacrosse was a precolonial Native American sport. At the individual level, skateboarding and snowboarding are twentieth-century U.S. inventions, related to surfing, a Hawaiian practice predating Western contact. Eight Olympiads have taken place in the United States. The United States has won 2,321 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, more than any other country, and the second most in the Winter Olympic Games, with 216 medals. Several American athletes have become world famous, in particular baseball player Babe Ruth, boxer Muhammad Ali, and basketball player Michael Jordan. The most frequently crowned champion among major U.S. sports teams is the New York Yankees, twenty-six times the winners of American baseball's World Series.

See also

Template:US topics

Footnotes

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134. American Heart Association, Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (2005), Fast Food, Central Nervous System Insulin Resistance, and Obesity
135. OECD Health Data 2000: A Comparative Analysis of 29 Countries (Paris: OECD, 2000); see also "The U.S. Healthcare System: The Best in the World or Just the Most Expensive? 2001. The University of Main. Accessed 29 November 2006.
136. Health, United States, 2006. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.
137. "Illness And Injury As Contributors To Bankruptcy", by David U. Himmelstein, Elizabeth Warren, Deborah Thorne, and Steffie Woolhandler, published at Health Affairs journal in 2005, Accessed 05 October 2006.
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139. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005. U.S. Census Bureau.
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141. Joyce Millet, Understanding American Culture: From Melting Pot to Salad Bowl. Cultural Savvy. Accessed 05 October 2006.
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144. Ehrenreich, Barbara (1989). Fear of Falling, The Inner Life of the Middle Class. New York, NY: Harper Collins. 0-06-0973331. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
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146. O'Keffe, Kevin (2005). The Average American. New York, NY: PublicAffairs. 1-58648-270-X. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
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