The chart above shows the area of each of the EU and US states. Alaska is so huge that it takes the next three largest states (Texas, France, and Spain) to rival its area.
Findings
- The difference between the largest state, Alaska, and the smallest, Malta, is 665,262 square miles (1,723,021 square Kilometers).
- The largest state, Alaska, is 5,454 times larger than the smallest state, Malta.
- Only Alaska, Texas, and France have over 200,000 square miles (517,998 square kilometers).
- Of the ten largest states, five are in the US and five in the EU.
Caveats
- EU data is from 2007, US data is from 2010.
- EU and US data come from two different sources.
- The area includes both land and water area.
Details
It takes the four largest European states (France, Spain, Sweden, and Germany) to rival the size of Alaska. Of the 78 states in the EU and the US, 63 have an area smaller than 100,000 square miles (258,999 square kilometers) and 37 have an area smaller than 50,000 square miles (129,499 square kilometers). Of the 15 states that have an area larger than 100,000 square miles, 12 have an area less than 200,000 square miles.
According to this data, the entire area of the 73 EU and US states is 5,490,476 square miles (14,220,267 square kilometers).
Sources
United Nations. 2007. "United Nations Statistics Division - Environment Statistics." Accessed January 23, 2018. https://unstats.un.org/unsd/environment/totalarea.htm.
United States Census Bureau. September 2012. "United States Summary: 2010: Population and Housing Unit Counts." Accessed January 23, 2018. https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/cph-2-1.pdf.