The chart above shows the area of each of the US regions. The Western US is so large that it takes all the three other regions to match its size.
Findings
- The difference between the largest region, the West, and the smallest, the Northeast, is 1,677,037 square miles (4,343,506 square kilometers).
- The largest region, is 9.55 times larger than the smallest region.
- The difference between the largest and smallest regions amounts to 855% of the smallest region's area and 90% of the largest region's area.
- The Northeast is almost a quarter the size of the Midwest which is nine-tenths the size of the South which is nearly half the size of the West.
Caveats
- The data is from 2010.
- The area includes both land and water area.
Details
Considering how relatively equal the populations of the regions are, one can see how crowded the Northeast is and how low the population density of the West is.
The largest state in each region does not take up a good chunk of the area of the region. Alaska takes up 36% of the West, Texas takes up 30% of the South, New York takes up 28% of the Northeast, and Michigan takes up 12% of the Midwest.
Sources
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.