Prior to the American Civil War, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio were the most populous states in the Union, each with between two and four million inhabitants. Industrialization in the north was one of the key drivers of population growth during this period, through both internal and external migration, and Illinois saw the largest population growth during the 1860s largely due to the expansion of industry around Chicago. The gradual industrialization of the north in the early 1800s also contributed to the decline of slavery in the Union states, and the economic differences between the Union and Confederacy was a key factor in both the build-up to the Civil War, as well as the Union's eventual victory in 1865.
This statistic shows the population of the United States in the final census year before the American Civil War, shown by race and gender. From the data we can see that there were almost 27 million white people, 4.5 million black people, and eighty thousand classed as 'other'. The proportions of men to women were different for each category, with roughly 700 thousand more white men than women, over 100 thousand more black women than men, and almost three times as many men than women in the 'other' category. The reason for the higher male numbers in the white and other categories is because men migrated to the US at a higher rate than women, while there is no concrete explanation for the statistic regarding black people.
During the American Civil War, not only was the Confederacy made up of fewer states than the Union, but these states were also much less populous than many in the North. For example, in the final census before the war in 1860, the five largest states in the South had around one million inhabitants each, while the largest states in the North had three to four million. In addition to the Union's larger population, the fact that European immigration into urban and industrial centers in the North was much higher also gave the Union a steady supply of recruits that were drafted as the war progressed, which was vital to the Union's victory in 1865.
The issue of race and slavery was arguably the largest cause of the American Civil War, with the southern states seceding from the Union as the practice of slavery became increasingly threatened. From the graph we can see that roughly 16.5 percent of the entire US population at this time was black, and the vast majority of these were slaves. In 1860 there were almost 27 million white people, four and a half million black people, and less than one hundred thousand non-black or white people (mostly of Native/Latin American or East-Asian origin).
The Border states were the five slave states who did not secede from the Union and did not declare allegiance to either side. Their name comes from the fact that they bordered the free states of the Union to the north, and the slave states of the Confederacy to the south. Generally speaking, the border states supported the Union more often than the Confederacy, however this changed throughout the war. For example, Missouri sent 39 regiments to fight in the siege of Vicksburg: 17 to the Confederacy and 22 to the Union. The involvement of men from these states was also complicated, as family members quite often found themselves on opposing sides of the battlefield. From the graph we can see that, while all states' populations grew, the smaller states had a lower growth rate, as they saw a higher proportion of conflict. Missouri had, by far, the highest growth rate during this decade, due to an increase in westward migration, as well as a lower rate of conflict.
During the mid-1800s the American population followed the country’s Manifest Destiny; as land was acquired, westward migration towards the Pacific occurred for various reasons.THE U.S. HISTORY GEOINQUIRY COLLECTIONhttp://www.esri.com/geoinquiriesTo support Esri’s involvement in the White House ConnectED Initiative, GeoInquiry instructional materials using ArcGIS Online for Earth Science education are now freely available. The U.S. History GeoInquiry collection contains 15 free, web-mapping activities that correspond and extend map-based concepts in leading high school U.S. History textbooks. The activities use a standard inquiry-based instructional model, require only 15 minutes for a teacher to deliver, and are device agnostic. The activities harmonize with the C3 curriculum standards for social studies education. Activity topics include:· The Great Exchange· The 13 Colonies - 1700s· The War Before Independence (The American Revolution)· The War of 1812· Westward, ho! (Trails west)· The Underground Railroad· From Compromise to Conflict· A nation divided: The Civil War· Native American Lands· Steel and the birth of a city (natural resources)· World War I· Dust Bowl· A day that lived in infamy (Pearl Harbor)· Operation Overlord - D-Day· Hot spots in the Cold WarTeachers, GeoMentors, and administrators can learn more at http://www.esri.com/geoinquiries.
There were almost 700 thousand slaves in the US in 1790, which equated to approximately 18 percent of the total population, or roughly one in every six people. By 1860, the final census taken before the American Civil War, there were four million slaves in the South, compared with less than 0.5 million free African Americans in all of the US. Of the 4.4 million African Americans in the US before the war, almost four million of these people were held as slaves; meaning that for all African Americans living in the US in 1860, there was an 89 percent* chance that they lived in slavery. A brief history Trans-Atlantic slavery began in the early sixteenth century, when the Portuguese and Spanish forcefully brought captured African slaves to the New World, in order to work for them. The British Empire introduced slavery to North America on a large scale, and the economy of the British colonies there depended on slave labor, particularly regarding cotton, sugar and tobacco output. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century the number of slaves being brought to the Americas increased exponentially, and at the time of American independence it was legal in all thirteen colonies. Although slavery became increasingly prohibited in the north, the number of slaves remained high during this time as they were simply relocated or sold from the north to the south. It is also important to remember that the children of slaves were also viewed as property, and (apart from some very rare cases) were born into a life of slavery. Abolition and the American Civil War In the years that followed independence, the Northern States began gradually prohibiting slavery, and it was officially abolished there by 1805, and the importation of slave labor was prohibited nationwide from 1808 (although both still existed in practice after this). Business owners in the Southern States however depended on slave labor in order to meet the demand of their rapidly expanding industries, and the issue of slavery continued to polarize American society in the decades to come. This culminated in the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860, who promised to prohibit slavery in the newly acquired territories to the west, leading to the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. Although the Confederacy (south) were victorious in much of the early stages of the war, the strength in numbers of the northern states (including many free, black men), eventually resulted in a victory for the Union (north), and the nationwide abolishment of slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Legacy In total, an estimated twelve to thirteen million Africans were transported to the Americas as slaves, and this does not include the high number who did not survive the journey (which was as high as 23 percent in some years). In the 150 years since the abolishment of slavery in the US, the African-American community have continuously campaigned for equal rights and opportunities that were not afforded to them along with freedom. The most prominent themes have been the Civil Rights Movement, voter suppression, mass incarceration and the relationship between the police and the African-American community has taken the spotlight in recent years.
This graph shows the total number of soldiers who were enlisted in the Union and Confederate armies during the American Civil War, between 1861 and 1865. The total population of the Union states was 18.9 million in 1860, and the Confederate states in the south had a population of 8.6 million. The Border States, who primarily supported the Union but sent troops to both sides, had a population of 3.5 million. From the graph we can see that over the course of the war a total of 2.1 million men enlisted for the Union Army, and 1.1 million enlisted for the Confederate Army. The Union Army had roughly double the number of soldiers of the Confederacy, and although the Confederacy won more major battles than the Union in the early stages of the war, the strength of numbers in the Union forces was a decisive factor in their overall victory as the war progressed.
A dataset to advance the study of life-cycle interactions of biomedical and socioeconomic factors in the aging process. The EI project has assembled a variety of large datasets covering the life histories of approximately 39,616 white male volunteers (drawn from a random sample of 331 companies) who served in the Union Army (UA), and of about 6,000 African-American veterans from 51 randomly selected United States Colored Troops companies (USCT). Their military records were linked to pension and medical records that detailed the soldiers������?? health status and socioeconomic and family characteristics. Each soldier was searched for in the US decennial census for the years in which they were most likely to be found alive (1850, 1860, 1880, 1900, 1910). In addition, a sample consisting of 70,000 men examined for service in the Union Army between September 1864 and April 1865 has been assembled and linked only to census records. These records will be useful for life-cycle comparisons of those accepted and rejected for service. Military Data: The military service and wartime medical histories of the UA and USCT men were collected from the Union Army and United States Colored Troops military service records, carded medical records, and other wartime documents. Pension Data: Wherever possible, the UA and USCT samples have been linked to pension records, including surgeon''''s certificates. About 70% of men in the Union Army sample have a pension. These records provide the bulk of the socioeconomic and demographic information on these men from the late 1800s through the early 1900s, including family structure and employment information. In addition, the surgeon''''s certificates provide rich medical histories, with an average of 5 examinations per linked recruit for the UA, and about 2.5 exams per USCT recruit. Census Data: Both early and late-age familial and socioeconomic information is collected from the manuscript schedules of the federal censuses of 1850, 1860, 1870 (incomplete), 1880, 1900, and 1910. Data Availability: All of the datasets (Military Union Army; linked Census; Surgeon''''s Certificates; Examination Records, and supporting ecological and environmental variables) are publicly available from ICPSR. In addition, copies on CD-ROM may be obtained from the CPE, which also maintains an interactive Internet Data Archive and Documentation Library, which can be accessed on the Project Website. * Dates of Study: 1850-1910 * Study Features: Longitudinal, Minority Oversamples * Sample Size: ** Union Army: 35,747 ** Colored Troops: 6,187 ** Examination Sample: 70,800 ICPSR Link: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/06836
In the past four centuries, the population of the United States has grown from a recorded 350 people around the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1610, to an estimated 331 million people in 2020. The pre-colonization populations of the indigenous peoples of the Americas have proven difficult for historians to estimate, as their numbers decreased rapidly following the introduction of European diseases (namely smallpox, plague and influenza). Native Americans were also omitted from most censuses conducted before the twentieth century, therefore the actual population of what we now know as the United States would have been much higher than the official census data from before 1800, but it is unclear by how much. Population growth in the colonies throughout the eighteenth century has primarily been attributed to migration from the British Isles and the Transatlantic slave trade; however it is also difficult to assert the ethnic-makeup of the population in these years as accurate migration records were not kept until after the 1820s, at which point the importation of slaves had also been illegalized. Nineteenth century In the year 1800, it is estimated that the population across the present-day United States was around six million people, with the population in the 16 admitted states numbering at 5.3 million. Migration to the United States began to happen on a large scale in the mid-nineteenth century, with the first major waves coming from Ireland, Britain and Germany. In some aspects, this wave of mass migration balanced out the demographic impacts of the American Civil War, which was the deadliest war in U.S. history with approximately 620 thousand fatalities between 1861 and 1865. The civil war also resulted in the emancipation of around four million slaves across the south; many of whose ancestors would take part in the Great Northern Migration in the early 1900s, which saw around six million black Americans migrate away from the south in one of the largest demographic shifts in U.S. history. By the end of the nineteenth century, improvements in transport technology and increasing economic opportunities saw migration to the United States increase further, particularly from southern and Eastern Europe, and in the first decade of the 1900s the number of migrants to the U.S. exceeded one million people in some years. Twentieth and twenty-first century The U.S. population has grown steadily throughout the past 120 years, reaching one hundred million in the 1910s, two hundred million in the 1960s, and three hundred million in 2007. In the past century, the U.S. established itself as a global superpower, with the world's largest economy (by nominal GDP) and most powerful military. Involvement in foreign wars has resulted in over 620,000 further U.S. fatalities since the Civil War, and migration fell drastically during the World Wars and Great Depression; however the population continuously grew in these years as the total fertility rate remained above two births per woman, and life expectancy increased (except during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918).
Since the Second World War, Latin America has replaced Europe as the most common point of origin for migrants, with Hispanic populations growing rapidly across the south and border states. Because of this, the proportion of non-Hispanic whites, which has been the most dominant ethnicity in the U.S. since records began, has dropped more rapidly in recent decades. Ethnic minorities also have a much higher birth rate than non-Hispanic whites, further contributing to this decline, and the share of non-Hispanic whites is expected to fall below fifty percent of the U.S. population by the mid-2000s. In 2020, the United States has the third-largest population in the world (after China and India), and the population is expected to reach four hundred million in the 2050s.
This statistic shows the number of black men and women in the US from 1820 until 1880. Slavery was legal in the Southern States of the US until 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was added to the US Constitution after the American Civil War. Until that time all of the slaves included in this statistic were registered as living in the South, whereas the majority of the free, black men and women lived in the Northern States. From the data we can see that, while the slave experience was very different for men and women, there was relatively little difference between their numbers in each respective category. While female slaves were more likely to serve in domestic roles, they were also more likely to be working in the lowest and unskilled jobs on plantations, whereas men were given more skilled and physically demanding roles. As slavery was abolished in 1870, all black people from this point were considered free in the census data. It is also worth noticing that in these years the difference in the number of men and women increased, most likely as a result of all the black male soldiers who fell fighting in the American Civil War.
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Personal willingness to engage in political violence, by target of violence and study group.
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Demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of study groups.
Although the founding fathers declared American independence in 1776, and the subsequent Revolutionary War ended in 1783, individual states did not officially join the union until 1787. The first states to ratify the U.S. Constitution were Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in December 1787, and they were joined by the remainder of the thirteen ex-British colonies by 1790. Another three states joined before the turn of the nineteenth century, and there were 45 states by 1900. The final states, Alaska and Hawaii, were admitted to the union in 1959, almost 172 years after the first colonies became federal states. Secession in the American Civil War The issues of slavery and territorial expansion in the mid nineteenth century eventually led to the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 until 1865. As the U.S. expanded westwards, a moral and economic argument developed about the legality of slavery in these new states; northern states were generally opposed to the expansion of slavery, whereas the southern states (who were economically dependent on slavery) saw this lack of extension as a stepping stone towards nationwide abolition. In 1861, eleven southern states seceded from the Union, and formed the Confederate States of America. When President Lincoln refused to relinquish federal property in the south, the Confederacy attacked, setting in motion the American Civil War. After four years, the Union emerged victorious, and the Confederate States of America was disbanded, and each individual state was readmitted to Congress gradually, between 1866 and 1870. Expansion of other territories Along with the fifty U.S. states, there is one federal district (Washington D.C., the capital city), and fourteen overseas territories, five of which with a resident population (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands). In 2019, President Trump inquired about the U.S. purchasing the territory of Greenland from Denmark, and, although Denmark's response indicated that this would be unlikely, this does suggest that the US may be open to further expansion of it's states and territories in the future. There is also a movement to make Washington D.C. the 51st state to be admitted to the union, as citizens of the nation's capital (over 700,000 people) do not have voting representation in the houses of Congress nor control over many local affairs; as of 2020, the U.S. public appears to be divided on the issue, and politicians are split along party lines, as D.C. votes overwhelmingly for the Democratic nominee in presidential elections.
The authors combine data from 84 Demographic and Health Surveys from 46 countries to analyze trends and socioeconomic differences in adult mortality, calculating mortality based on the sibling mortality reports collected from female respondents aged 15-49.
The analysis yields four main findings. First, adult mortality is different from child mortality: while under-5 mortality shows a definite improving trend over time, adult mortality does not, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. The second main finding is the increase in adult mortality in Sub-Saharan African countries. The increase is dramatic among those most affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Mortality rates in the highest HIV-prevalence countries of southern Africa exceed those in countries that experienced episodes of civil war. Third, even in Sub-Saharan countries where HIV-prevalence is not as high, mortality rates appear to be at best stagnating, and even increasing in several cases. Finally, the main socioeconomic dimension along which mortality appears to differ in the aggregate is gender. Adult mortality rates in Sub-Saharan Africa have risen substantially higher for men than for women?especially so in the high HIV-prevalence countries. On the whole, the data do not show large gaps by urban/rural residence or by school attainment.
This paper is a product of the Human Development and Public Services Team, Development Research Group. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org.
We derive estimates of adult mortality from an analysis of Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from 46 countries, 33 of which are from Sub-Saharan Africa and 13 of which are from countries in other regions (Annex Table). Several of the countries have been surveyed more than once and we base our estimates on the total of 84 surveys that have been carried out (59 in Sub-Saharan Africa, 25 elsewhere).
The countries covered by DHS in Sub-Saharan Africa represent almost 90 percent of the region's population. Outside of Sub-Saharan Africa the DHS surveys we use cover a far smaller share of the population-even if this is restricted to countries whose GDP per capita never exceeds $10,000: overall about 14 percent of the population is covered by these countries, although this increases to 29 percent if China and India are excluded (countries for which we cannot calculate adult mortality using the DHS). It is therefore important to keep in mind that the sample of non-Sub-Saharan African countries we have cannot be thought of as "representative" of the rest of the world, or even the rest of the developing world.
Country
Sample survey data [ssd]
Face-to-face [f2f]
In the course of carrying out this study, the authors created two databases of adult mortality estimates based on the original DHS datasets, both of which are publicly available for analysts who wish to carry out their own analysis of the data.
The naming conventions for the adult mortality-related are as follows. Variables are named:
GGG_MC_AAAA
GGG refers to the population subgroup. The values it can take, and the corresponding definitions are in the following table:
All - All Fem - Female Mal - Male Rur - Rural Urb - Urban Rurm - Rural/Male Urbm - Urban/Male Rurf - Rural/Female Urbf - Urban/Female Noed - No education Pri - Some or completed primary only Sec - At least some secondary education Noedm - No education/Male Prim - Some or completed primary only/Male Secm - At least some secondary education/Male Noedf - No education/Female Prif - Some or completed primary only/Female Secf - At least some secondary education/Female Rch - Rural as child Uch - Urban as child Rchm - Rural as child/Male Uchm - Urban as child/Male Rchf - Rural as child/Female Uchf - Urban as child/Female Edltp - Less than primary schooling Edpom - Primary or more schooling Edltpm - Less than primary schooling/Male Edpomm - Primary or more schooling/Male Edltpf - Less than primary schooling/Female Edpomf - Primary or more schooling/Female Edltpu - Less than primary schooling/Urban Edpomu - Primary or more schooling/Urban Edltpr - Less than primary schooling/Rural Edpomr - Primary or more schooling/Rural Edltpmu - Less than primary schooling/Male/Urban Edpommu - Primary or more schooling/Male/Urban Edltpmr - Less than primary schooling/Male/Rural Edpommr - Primary or more schooling/Male/Rural Edltpfu - Less than primary schooling/Female/Urban Edpomfu - Primary or more schooling/Female/Urban Edltpfr - Less than primary schooling/Female/Rural Edpomfr - Primary or more schooling/Female/Rural
M refers to whether the variable is the number of observations used to calculate the estimate (in which case M takes on the value "n") or whether it is a mortality estimate (in which case M takes on the value "m").
C refers to whether the variable is for the unadjusted mortality rate calculation (in which case C takes on the value "u") or whether it adjusts for the number of surviving female siblings (in which case C takes on the value "a").
AAAA refers to the age group that the mortality estimate is calculated for. It takes on the values: 1554 - Ages 15-54 1524 - Ages 15-24 2534 - Ages 25-34 3544 - Ages 35-44 4554 - Ages 45-54
Other variables that are in the databases are:
period - Period for which mortality rate is calculated (takes on the values 1975-79, 1980-84 … 2000-04) svycountry - Name of country for DHS countries ccode3 - Country code u5mr - Under-5 mortality (from World Development Indicators) cname - Country name gdppc - GDP per capita (constant 2000 US$) (from World Development Indicators) gdppcppp - GDP per capita PPP (constant 2005 intl $) (from World Development Indicators) pop - Population (from World Development Indicators) hivprev2001 - HIV prevalence in 2001 (from UNAIDS 2010) region - Region
Just before the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 Union states had approximately five times as many factories as the Confederacy, and ten times the amount of factory workers. This level of industrialization is reflective of the economies at the time, with the Confederate and Border states depending more heavily on agriculture for their economic output, whereas the more industrialized cities of the northern states had many more factories. This also ties in with the issue of slavery at the time, which was arguably the most influential factor in the cessation of the southern states. The rural farm owners of the south depended on slave labor to maintain their output, and did not have large concentrations of population to pull workers from, whereas the factory owners of the north had a large supply of workers from more urbanized areas.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the U.S. labor force was approximately 1.9 million people, with slaves making up over half a million (28 percent) of this number. The share of slaves then increased to almost one third of the overall workforce in the next decade, but dropped to roughly one fifth by 1860; the year before the American Civil War. While the total number of slaves grew by several hundred thousand in each decade, their share of the U.S. labor force decreased due to the high levels of European migration to the U.S. throughout the 19th century. This wave of mass migration was an influential factor in slavery's eventual abolition, as Europeans met the labor demands that had previously been fulfilled by slaves, and those fleeing persecution and oppression in Europe were often sympathetic to the plight of slaves. Nonetheless, the majority of European migrants arrived in the industrialized, northern states, most of which had already abolished slavery in the 18th century, and slave labor was concentrated in the agricultural south at this time; this divide would prove fundamental in the outbreak of the American Civil War.
Throughout the 19th century, the share of military personnel employed by the United States government was below 0.2 percent of the total population in most years. There were noticeable spikes in enlistments and conscriptions during the American Civil War (1861-65), the First World War (1917-18*), and Second World War (1941-45*), as well as smaller increases during the Mexican-American War (1946-48) and the Spanish-American War (1898), but figures were generally much lower than the post-WWII era.
Following the Second World War, the United States abandoned many of its isolationist positions as it sought to become the world's leading superpower. This involved stationing millions of troops in overseas bases during the Cold War, in strategically important locations such as West Germany, Japan, and Taiwan. Additionally, involvement in conflicts such as the Korean War (1950-1953) and Vietnam War (1964-1973*) kept military employment high, usually between 1-2 percent until the 1970s. Figures remained just below the one percent mark until the 1990s, when the end of the Cold War and the growing influence of technology in conventional warfare saw a decrease in demand for many traditional combat roles. Despite U.S. involvement in a number of overseas conflicts in the 21st century, military personnel represented less than 0.5 percent of the total population in most years between 2000 and 2016.
In the 1824 U.S presidential election, which was the first where a popular vote was used to determine the overall winner, approximately three percent of the U.S. population voted in the election, while only one percent actually voted for the winner. Over the following decades, restrictions that prevented non-property owning males from voting were gradually repealed, and almost all white men over the age of 21 could vote by the 1856 election. The next major development was the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution following the American Civil War, which granted suffrage to all male citizens of voting age, regardless of race. Turnout then grew to almost twenty percent at the turn of the century, however Jim Crow laws played a large part in keeping these numbers lower than they potentially could have been, by disenfranchising black communities in the south and undoing much of the progress made during the Reconstruction Era. Extension of voting rights Female suffrage, granted to women in 1920, was responsible for the largest participation increase between any two elections in U.S. history. Between the 1916 and 1920 elections, overall turnout increased by almost seven percent, and it continued to grow to 38 percent by the 1940 election; largely due to the growth in female participation over time. Following a slight reduction during the Second World War and 1948 elections, turnout remained at between 36 and forty percent from the 1950s until the 1990s. Between these decades, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Twenty-Sixth Amendment in 1971 respectively re-enfranchised many black voters in the south and reduced the voting age in all states from 21 to 18 years old. Participation among female voters has also exceeded male participation in all elections since 1980. Recent trends The 1992 election was the first where more than forty percent of the total population cast ballots, and turnout has been above forty percent in all presidential elections since 2004. Along with the extension of voting rights, the largest impact on voter turnout has been the increase in life expectancy throughout the centuries, almost doubling in the past 150 years. As the overall average age has risen, so too has the share of the total population who are eligible to vote, and older voters have had the highest turnout rates since the 1980s. Another factor is increased political involvement among ethnic minorities; while white voters have traditionally had the highest turnout rates in presidential elections, black voters turnout has exceeded the national average since 2008. Asian and Hispanic voter turnouts have also increased in the past twenty years, with the growing Hispanic vote in southern and border states expected to cause a major shift in U.S. politics in the coming decades.
In terms of the most popular presidents, in the 1940 election, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first president to have been elected by more than one fifth of the total population. Three presidents were elected by more than 22 percent of the total population, respectively Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, Richard Nixon in 1972 and Barack Obama in 2008, while Ronald Reagan's re-election in 1984 saw him become the only president in U.S. history to win with the support of more than 23 percent of the total population. While the vote count for the 2020 election is still to be finalized, President-elect Joe Biden has already received 81.28 million votes as of December 02, which would also translate to over 24.5 percent of the total population, and will likely near 25 percent by the end of the counting process.
In 2020, about 82.66 percent of the total population in the United States lived in cities and urban areas. As the United States was one of the earliest nations to industrialize, it has had a comparatively high rate of urbanization over the past two centuries. The urban population became larger than the rural population during the 1910s, and by the middle of the century it is expected that almost 90 percent of the population will live in an urban setting. Regional development of urbanization in the U.S. The United States began to urbanize on a larger scale in the 1830s, as technological advancements reduced the labor demand in agriculture, and as European migration began to rise. One major difference between early urbanization in the U.S. and other industrializing economies, such as the UK or Germany, was population distribution. Throughout the 1800s, the Northeastern U.S. became the most industrious and urban region of the country, as this was the main point of arrival for migrants. Disparities in industrialization and urbanization was a key contributor to the Union's victory in the Civil War, not only due to population sizes, but also through production capabilities and transport infrastructure. The Northeast's population reached an urban majority in the 1870s, whereas this did not occur in the South until the 1950s. As more people moved westward in the late 1800s, not only did their population growth increase, but the share of the urban population also rose, with an urban majority established in both the West and Midwest regions in the 1910s. The West would eventually become the most urbanized region in the 1960s, and over 90 percent of the West's population is urbanized today. Urbanization today New York City is the most populous city in the United States, with a population of 8.3 million, while California has the largest urban population of any state. California also has the highest urbanization rate, although the District of Columbia is considered 100 percent urban. Only four U.S. states still have a rural majority, these are Maine, Mississippi, Montana, and West Virginia.
Prior to the American Civil War, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio were the most populous states in the Union, each with between two and four million inhabitants. Industrialization in the north was one of the key drivers of population growth during this period, through both internal and external migration, and Illinois saw the largest population growth during the 1860s largely due to the expansion of industry around Chicago. The gradual industrialization of the north in the early 1800s also contributed to the decline of slavery in the Union states, and the economic differences between the Union and Confederacy was a key factor in both the build-up to the Civil War, as well as the Union's eventual victory in 1865.