The role of Canada

Canada’s share of the total continental population is small (less than 10 percent), and, with some two-fifths of the continent’s land area, its overall population density is low. Most of Canada—the shield, the northern Appalachians and Cordilleras, and the tundra and boreal forest zones—is almost devoid of inhabitants. Population is concentrated toward the south, around the Bay of Fundy, the St. Lawrence River and lower Great Lakes, the southern prairies, and the Columbia and Fraser valleys. Wealth is still based on iron, nickel, and other metals; oil and natural gas; hydroelectric resources; and grains, livestock, fish, and forest products. Much of its manufacturing industry depends on these resources. Mechanization and automation give a high per capita production, and it produces far more food and various raw materials than it can consume and thus sells much abroad.

A member of the Commonwealth, Canada has a population that is still about one-fourth British in ancestry and about three-fifths English-speaking. The fact that about one-fourth of the population is French-speaking reflects Canada’s origin from the two founding nations of France and Great Britain. Although most Canadians are native-born, immigration is still a major factor. By the early 21st century about one-fifth of Canada’s population was foreign-born, with the non-British (including Africans, Asians, Middle Easterners, and U.S. citizens) significantly outnumbering the British among the new settlers. Canada is thus a bilingual multicultural country, with strong attachments to Britain and other western European countries. It is dependent economically on the United States, the source of the great majority of foreign investment and of more than three-fifths of Canada’s imports and the destination for some three-fourths of its exports. Ontario is the leading destination for immigrants and internal migrants, but Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec, and the largest cities also are attracting new residents. Some four-fifths of the national population lives in urban areas, with about one-fourth in the metropolitan areas of Montreal and Toronto, the leading industrial and business centres.

The role of the United States

The United States dominates the continent, with considerably more than half the total continental population. Unlike the other countries of North America, most of its area is habitable, even though the many mountainous and arid regions are almost unpopulated. The average density is much higher than that of Canada, though still low compared with Europe or Asia.

Historically, the most heavily populated section comprised the Middle Atlantic states, New England, and the Great Lakes states, but in the second half of the 20th century California, Florida, Arizona, and Texas underwent rapid relative growth rates. This influx can be attributed in part to the attraction such amenities as a mild winter climate have for people retiring to those areas, but it also has resulted from the flourishing of high-technology manufacturing and service industries.

Even though the strong shift to the southern and western states has come to dominate migration, other population flows have emerged. Notable among these have been the increases in northern New England. Most metropolitan areas still receive more migrants than they lose—both foreign and domestic—but overall urban growth rates have lessened markedly since 1950. Indeed, since the late 1960s a near equilibrium has existed in the exchange of migrants between urban and rural areas, and nonurban environments have become increasingly appealing to many Americans.

The United States has developed its service sector more fully than any other New World country, with the overwhelming preponderance of its working population thus employed. Less than one-fifth of all workers are in manufacturing and construction, and the remainder are engaged in primary production, such as farming, mining, fishing, and lumbering. The per capita consumption of material goods in the United States is among the highest in the world.

Immigration is supplying an increasingly large share of the country’s population increase; the birth rate has dropped below the replacement level. Among native-born groups, fertility has been highest among Native Americans, Hispanics, African Americans, and such religious groups as the Mormons. Less than one-fifth of all African Americans remain in the rural South, as most now live in the larger cities, predominantly in overcrowded inner-city areas. Blacks now constitute the largest single group in many large American cities and represent a majority population in a number of them. The inner-city concentration of Blacks and Hispanics, one of the more conspicuous features of urban life in North America, has been paralleled by a strong white population shift to the suburbs. A large percentage of the U.S. population growth has been in metropolitan suburbs, thus often exacerbating the problems of the inner city.

Despite the leveling effects of modern means of communication and travel and the impact of large national and multinational firms, the United States retains much regional diversity in its culture. Even though new regional patterns may emerge—as in southern California or the Hispanic-influenced Southwest—the five principal traditional culture areas of New England, the Midland, the South, the Midwest, and West remain recognizable in a variety of ways. Such cultural complexes are the products of differences in the ethnic identity and social backgrounds of their inhabitants, the date and place of their arrival, and the interaction with physical habitats and historical circumstance that vary from place to place. Perhaps the most closely studied of the relevant phenomena have been the various dialects of a rapidly evolving American English, a language that is clearly distinct from British English and subtly different from Canadian English; and these dialects—and subdialects, such as the speech of New York City, New Orleans, or Philadelphia—tend to coincide with other markers of regional identity. Enough also has been learned about the regional aspects of building construction—including barns, fences, farmsteads, cemeteries, and the layouts of towns and villages—to affirm the existence of the older and newer culture areas. A striking 20th-century development has been the emergence of what are called “voluntary regions”—i.e., places to which people of similar tastes or aptitudes tend to gravitate. Some of these regions are relatively large (such as southern Florida, the Ozarks retirement region, or the Kentucky Bluegrass region), but much smaller localities (such as cities in Nevada and Arizona, certain college communities, winter-sport developments in the Rockies, or research complexes in places like North Carolina’s Research Triangle) have acquired their unique populations and distinctive ways of life.

In one major cultural respect the United States has become unique: the sheer number and diversity of its religious denominations. All the world’s major religions and sects are represented, and other groups are constantly appearing. Many of these churches were imported from the Old World, but a large number are domestic in origin. Although Protestantism accounts for a large majority of denominations and population, Roman Catholicism is by far the largest single religious community; it accounts for nearly 30 percent of all church members in the United States, but many of its adherents and parishes tend to practice the faith in their own ethnic fashion. There remain significant minorities of Americans professing other faiths—notably Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism—as well as less familiar ones, and, like Protestants and Catholics, these groups often are split along ethnic or doctrinal lines. Certain denominations are closely identified with general culture areas. This is true for the Southern Baptists, the Lutherans of the Upper Midwest, and, most prominently, the Mormons of Utah and portions of neighbouring states. Other denominations that were once localized have become national in scope, such as the Presbyterians who once were clustered in western Pennsylvania and other zones of Scotch-Irish settlement and the Unitarians who were most closely identified with portions of New England. There is also a significant portion of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated.

The role of Mexico, the West Indies, and Central America

The combined areas of Mexico, the West Indies, and Central America have a substantial population, which has been growing rapidly. Although birth rates have been reduced somewhat in Mexico and Costa Rica, overall birth rates remain high, and death rates have dropped to an all-time low; thus, a population explosion has been under way for some time. As in other developing areas, the existing economy can scarcely support the present population, despite the considerable expansion of manufacturing and service industries in Mexico. American capital investment and government aid have been aimed at helping Central America and the Caribbean countries to become self-sufficient, and, although the assistance has been helpful, it also has created problems, such as the massive foreign debts owed by many of these countries. In addition, the impact of such development assistance tends to be concentrated in the capital cities, with little discernible benefit to the rest of the countryside.

If Canada has something approaching the diversity of religions found in the United States, the situation is relatively simple in Mexico and Central America, where the overwhelming majority of inhabitants are at least nominally Roman Catholic or—in the case of many mestizos and aboriginal people—profess a version of Christianity that has become hybridized with preconquest indigenous faiths. As might be expected, the Spanish language also is strongly dominant in these lands, except in those less-accessible portions of Mexico and Guatemala where a multiplicity of aboriginal tongues are still spoken. The Spanish spoken in these regions has undergone a transformation from its mother tongue similar to the process that gave rise to American English. Regional dialects have emerged, and the language has been enriched through the adoption of words from indigenous languages.