cyanic-selkie/wikianc huggingface dataset:
United States of America
Contemporary period (1990–present)
Fearing the spread of regional international instability from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, in August 1991, President George H. W. Bush launched and led the Gulf War against Iraq, expelling Iraqi forces and dissolving the Iraqi-backed puppet state in Kuwait. During the administration of President Bill Clinton in 1994, the U.S. signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), causing trade among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to soar. Due to the dot-com boom, stable monetary policy, and reduced social welfare spending, the 1990s saw the longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history. On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorist hijackers flew passenger planes into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly 3,000 people. In response, President George W. Bush launched the war on terror, which included a nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021 and the 2003–2011 Iraq War. Government policy designed to promote affordable housing, widespread failures in corporate and regulatory governance, and historically low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve led to a housing bubble in 2006. This culminated in the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession, the nation's largest economic contraction since the Great Depression.
Barack Obama, the first multiracial President with African-American ancestry, was elected in 2008 amid the financial crisis. By the end of his second term, the stock market, median household income and net worth, and the number of persons with jobs were all at record levels, while the unemployment rate was well below the historical average. His signature legislative accomplishment was the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as "Obamacare". It represented the U.S. health care system's most significant regulatory overhaul and expansion of coverage since Medicare in 1965. As a result, the uninsured share of the population was cut in half, while the number of newly insured Americans was estimated to be between 20 and 24 million. After Obama served two terms, Republican Donald Trump was elected as the 45th president in 2016. His election is viewed as one of the biggest political upsets in American and world history. Trump held office through the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting COVID-19 recession starting in 2020 that exceeded even the Great Recession earlier in the century.
Political polarization increased beginning in the 2010s, with abortion access, same-sex marriage, the transgender rights movement, lingering systemic racism, police brutality, undocumented immigration, mass shootings and recreational marijuana use becoming central topics of debate. Several protests have since become among the largest in U.S. history. On January 6, 2021, supporters of the outgoing President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in an unsuccessful effort to disrupt the Electoral College vote count that would confirm Democrat Joe Biden as the 46th president. In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that there is no constitutional right to an abortion, causing another wave of protests. The United States responded to Russia and Belarus after their invasion of Ukraine, with the country applying harsh sanctions on Russia and sending tens of billions of dollars of military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
KwaZamokuhle, Mpumalanga
KwaZamokuhle, Mpumalanga ni msumba udoko mu boma likulu la Nkangala District Municipality, mu chigaŵa chikulu cha Mpumalanga, charu cha South Africa.
United States of America
Geography
The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont. The Appalachian Mountains and the Adirondack massif divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi–Missouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north–south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast.
The Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, peaking at over 14000 ft in Colorado. Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Chihuahua, Sonoran, and Mojave. The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast, both ranges also reaching altitudes higher than 14000 ft. The lowest and highest points in the contiguous United States are in the state of California, and only about 84 mi apart. At an elevation of 20310 ft, Alaska's Denali is the highest peak in the country and in North America. Active volcanoes are common throughout Alaska's Alexander and Aleutian Islands, and Hawaii consists of volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent's largest volcanic feature.
Climate
The United States, with its large size and geographic variety, includes most climate types. To the east of the 100th meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south.
Klarinet, Mpumalanga
Klarinet, Mpumalanga ni msumba udoko mu boma likulu la Nkangala District Municipality, mu chigaŵa chikulu cha Mpumalanga, charu cha South Africa.
United States of America
Climate
The Great Plains west of the 100th meridian are semi-arid. Many mountainous areas of the American West have an alpine climate. The climate is arid in the Great Basin, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in coastal Oregon and Washington and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar. Hawaii and the southern tip of Florida are tropical, as well as its territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific.
States bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur in the country, mainly in Tornado Alley areas in the Midwest and South. Overall, the United States receives more high-impact extreme weather incidents than any other country in the world.
Biodiversity and conservation
The U.S. is one of 17 megadiverse countries containing large numbers of endemic species: about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and more than 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland. The United States is home to 428 mammal species, 784 birds, 311 reptiles, and 295 amphibians, and 91,000 insect species.
There are 63 national parks which are managed by the National Park Service, and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas managed by it and other agencies. Altogether, the government owns about 28% of the country's land area, mostly in the western states. Most of this land is protected, though some is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, logging, or cattle ranching, and about .86% is used for military purposes.
Environmental issues include debates on oil and nuclear energy, dealing with air and water pollution, the economic costs of protecting wildlife, logging and deforestation, and climate change. The most prominent environmental agency is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), created by presidential order in 1970. The idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since 1964, with the Wilderness Act. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is intended to protect threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
As of 2020, the U.S. ranked 24th among 180 nations in the Environmental Performance Index. The country joined the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2016, and has many other environmental commitments. It withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2020 but rejoined it in 2021.
Government and politics
The United States is a federal republic of 50 states, a federal district, five territories and several uninhabited island possessions. It is the world's oldest surviving federation, and, according to the World Economic Forum, the oldest democracy as well. It is a liberal representative democracy "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law." Major democracy indexes uniformly classify the country as a liberal democracy. The 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index and Global Corruption Barometer rank the United States as having low levels of both actual and perceived corruption.
The U.S. Constitution serves as the country's supreme legal document, establishing the structure and responsibilities of the federal government and its relationship with the individual states. The Constitution has been amended 27 times; the first ten amendments (Bill of Rights) and the Fourteenth Amendment form the central basis of Americans' individual rights. All laws and governmental procedures are subject to judicial review, and any law can be voided if the courts determine that it violates the Constitution. The principle of judicial review, not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, was established by the Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison (1803).
In the American federal system, sovereignty is shared between two levels of government: federal and state. Citizens of the states are also governed by local governments, which are administrative divisions of the states. The territories are administrative divisions of the federal government. Governance on many issues is decentralized, with widely differing state laws on abortion, cannabis, the death penalty, guns, economic policy, and other issues. States have increasingly restricted so-called "conversion therapy". Prostitution is only legal in several counties of Nevada.
The United States has operated under an uncodified informal two-party system for most of its history, although other parties have run candidates. What the two major parties are has changed over time: the Republicans and Democrats presently are, and the country is currently in either the Fifth or Sixth Party System. Both parties have no formal central organization at the national level that controls membership, elected officials or political policies; thus, each party has traditionally had factions and individuals that deviated from party positions. Since the 2000s, the country has suffered from significant political polarization.
Federal government
The federal government comprises three branches, which are headquartered in Washington, D.C. and regulated by a system of checks and balances defined by the Constitution.
The lower house, the House of Representatives, has 435 voting members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population. Each state then draws single-member districts to conform with the census apportionment. The District of Columbia and the five major U.S. territories each have one member of Congress—these members are not allowed to vote.
The upper house, the Senate, has 100 members with each state having two senators, elected at large to six-year terms; one-third of Senate seats are up for election every two years. The District of Columbia and the five major U.S. territories do not have senators. The Senate is unique among upper houses in being the most prestigious and powerful portion of the country's bicameral system; political scientists have frequently labeled it the "most powerful upper house" of any government.
The President serves a four-year term and may be elected to the office no more than twice. The President is not elected by direct vote, but by an indirect electoral college system in which the determining votes are apportioned to the states and the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court, led by the chief justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life. They are appointed by the sitting President when a vacancy becomes available.
Political subdivisions
Citizenship is granted at birth in all states, the District of Columbia, and all major U.S. territories except American Samoa. The United States observes limited tribal sovereignty of the American Indian nations, like states' sovereignty. American Indians are U.S. citizens and tribal lands are subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress and the federal courts. Like the states, tribes have some autonomy restrictions. They are prohibited from making war, engaging in their own foreign relations, and printing or issuing independent currency. Indian reservations are usually contained within one state, but there are 12 reservations that cross state boundaries.
Foreign relations
The United States has an established structure of foreign relations, and it had the world's second-largest diplomatic corps in 2019. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and home to the United Nations headquarters. The United States is also a member of the G7, G20, and OECD intergovernmental organizations. Almost all countries have embassies and many have consulates (official representatives) in the country. Likewise, nearly all nations host formal diplomatic missions with United States, except Iran, North Korea, and Bhutan. Though Taiwan does not have formal diplomatic relations with the U.S., it maintains close, if unofficial, relations. The United States also regularly supplies Taiwan with military equipment to deter potential Chinese aggression.
Military
The President is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Department of Defense, which is headquartered at the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., administers five of the six service branches, which are made up of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force. The Coast Guard is administered by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and can be transferred to the Department of the Navy in wartime. The United States spent $877 billion on its military in 2022, 39% of global military spending, accounting for 3.5% of the country's GDP.  The U.S. has more than 40% of the world's nuclear weapons, the second-largest amount after Russia.
In 2019, all six branches of the U.S. Armed Forces reported 1.4 million personnel on active duty. The Reserves and National Guard brought the total number of troops to 2.3 million. The Department of Defense also employed about 700,000 civilians, not including contractors. Military service in the United States is voluntary, although conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System. The United States has the third-largest combined armed forces in the world, behind the Chinese People's Liberation Army and Indian Armed Forces.
Today, American forces can be rapidly deployed by the Air Force's large fleet of transport aircraft, the Navy's 11 active aircraft carriers, and Marine expeditionary units at sea with the Navy, and Army's XVIII Airborne Corps and 75th Ranger Regiment deployed by Air Force transport aircraft. The Air Force can strike targets across the globe through its fleet of strategic bombers, maintains the air defense across the United States, and provides close air support to Army and Marine Corps ground forces.
The Space Force operates the Global Positioning System (GPS, also widespread in civilian use worldwide), the Eastern and Western Ranges for all space launches, and the United States's Space Surveillance and Missile Warning networks. The military operates about 800 bases and facilities abroad, and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries.
Blinkpan, Mpumalanga
Blinkpan, Mpumalanga ni msumba udoko mu boma likulu la Nkangala District Municipality, mu chigaŵa chikulu cha Mpumalanga, charu cha South Africa.
KwaGuqa
KwaGuqa ni msumba udoko mu boma likulu la Nkangala District Municipality, mu chigaŵa chikulu cha Mpumalanga, charu cha South Africa.
Hendrina, Mpumalanga
Hendrina, Mpumalanga ni msumba udoko mu boma likulu la Nkangala District Municipality, mu chigaŵa chikulu cha Mpumalanga, charu cha South Africa.
Komati, Mpumalanga
Komati, Mpumalanga ni msumba udoko mu boma likulu la Nkangala District Municipality, mu chigaŵa chikulu cha Mpumalanga, charu cha South Africa.
United States of America
Law enforcement and crime
There are about 18,000 U.S. police agencies from local to federal level in the United States. Law in the United States is mainly enforced by local police departments and sheriff's offices. The state police provides broader services, and federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have specialized duties, such as protecting civil rights, national security and enforcing U.S. federal courts' rulings and federal laws. State courts conduct most civil and criminal trials, and federal courts handle designated crimes and appeals from the state criminal courts.
, the United States has an intentional homicide rate of 7 per 100,000 people. A cross-sectional analysis of the World Health Organization Mortality Database from 2010 showed that United States homicide rates "were 7.0 times higher than in other high-income countries, driven by a gun homicide rate that was 25.2 times higher."
As of January 2023, the United States has the sixth highest per-capita incarceration rate in the world, at 531 people per 100,000; and the largest prison and jail population in the world at 1,767,200. In 2019, the total prison population for those sentenced to more than a year was 1,430,800, corresponding to a ratio of 419 per 100,000 residents and the lowest since 1995. Some think tanks place that number higher, such as Prison Policy Initiative's estimate of 1.9 million. Various states have attempted to reduce their prison populations via government policies and grassroots initiatives.
Economy
According to the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) of $25.5 trillion constitutes over 25% of the gross world product at market exchange rates and over 15% of the gross world product at purchasing power parity (PPP). From 1983 to 2008, U.S. real compounded annual GDP growth was 3.3%, compared to a 2.3% weighted average for the rest of the G7. The country ranks first in the world by nominal GDP, second by GDP (PPP), seventh by nominal GDP per capita, and eighth by GDP (PPP) per capita. As of 2022, the United States was ranked 25th out of 169 countries on the Social Progress Index, which measures "the extent to which countries provide for the social and environmental needs of their citizens." The U.S. has been the world's largest economy since at least 1900.
The United States is at or near the forefront of technological advancement and innovation in many economic fields, especially in artificial intelligence; computers; pharmaceuticals; and medical, aerospace and military equipment. The nation's economy is fueled by abundant natural resources, a well-developed infrastructure, and high productivity. It has the second-highest total-estimated value of natural resources, valued at US$44.98trillion in 2019, although sources differ on their estimates. Americans have the highest average household and employee income among OECD member states. In 2013, they had the sixth-highest median household income, down from fourth-highest in 2010.
The U.S. dollar is the currency most used in international transactions and is the world's foremost reserve currency, backed by the country's dominant economy, its military, the petrodollar system, and its linked eurodollar and large U.S. treasuries market. Several countries use it as their official currency and in others it is the de facto currency. New York City is the world's principal financial center, with the largest economic output, and the epicenter of the principal American metropolitan economy. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are the world's largest stock exchanges by market capitalization and trade volume.
The largest U.S. trading partners are the European Union, Mexico, Canada, China, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, India, and Taiwan. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second-largest exporter after China. It has free trade agreements with several countries, including the USMCA. The U.S. ranked second in the Global Competitiveness Report in 2019, after Singapore. Many of the world's largest companies, such as Alphabet (Google), Amazon, AT&T, Apple, Coca-Cola, Disney, General Motors, McDonald's, Nike, Meta, Microsoft, Pepsi, and Walmart, were founded and are headquartered in the United States. Of the world's 500 largest companies, 124 are headquartered in the U.S.
While its economy has reached a post-industrial level of development, the United States remains an industrial power. As of 2018, the U.S. is the second-largest manufacturing nation after China. In 2013, the U.S. national debt to GDP ratio surpassed 100% when both debt and GDP were approximately $16.7 trillion; in 2022, U.S. national debt was $30.93 trillion, while debt to GDP ratio was 124%.
Income and poverty
At US$69,392 in 2020, the United States was ranked first in the world by average yearly wage based on the OECD data, and it had the world's highest median income at US$46,625 in 2021. Despite the fact that the U.S. only accounted for 4.24% of the global population, residents of the U.S. collectively possessed 30.2% of the world's total wealth as of 2021, the largest percentage of any country. The U.S. also ranks first in the number of dollar billionaires and millionaires, with 724 billionaires (as of 2021) and nearly 22 million millionaires (2021).
The United States has a smaller welfare state and redistributes less income through government action than most other high-income countries. The U.S. ranked the 52nd highest in income inequality among 167 countries in 2014, and the highest compared to the rest of the developed world in 2018.
Wealth in the United States is highly concentrated; the richest 10% of the adult population own 72% of the country's household wealth, while the bottom 50% own just 2%. Income inequality in the U.S. remains at record highs, with the top fifth of earners taking home more than half of all income and giving the U.S. one of the widest income distributions among OECD members. The United States is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation nationally and is one of a few countries in the world without federal paid family leave as a legal right. The United States also has a higher percentage of low-income workers than almost any other developed nation, largely because of a weak collective bargaining system and lack of government support for at-risk workers.
In 2011, 16.7 million children lived in food-insecure households, about 35% more than 2007 levels, though only 845,000 U.S. children (1.1%) saw reduced food intake or disrupted eating patterns at some point during the year, and most cases were not chronic. 40 million people, roughly 12.7% of the U.S. population, were living in poverty, including 13.3 million children; the poverty threshold in the United States was at $12,880 for a single-person household and $26,246 for a family of four in 2021. As of 2019, 2% of the U.S. population earned less than $10 per day. 0.25% of the U.S. population lived below the international poverty line of $2.15 per day in 2020.
Science, technology, and energy
The United States has been a leader in technological innovation since the late 19th century and scientific research since the mid-20th century. Methods for producing interchangeable parts and the establishment of a machine tool industry enabled the U.S. to have large-scale manufacturing of sewing machines, bicycles, and other items in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, factory electrification, the introduction of the assembly line, and other labor-saving techniques created the system of mass production. In the 21st century, approximately two-thirds of research and development funding comes from the private sector. In 2022, the United States was the country with the second-highest number of published scientific papers. As of 2021, the U.S. ranked second by the number of patent applications, and third by trademark and industrial design applications. In 2021, the United States launched a total of 51 spaceflights (China reported 55). The U.S. had 2,944 active satellites in space in December 2021, the highest number of any country.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone. Thomas Edison's research laboratory developed the phonograph, the first long-lasting light bulb, and the first viable movie camera. The Wright brothers in 1903 made the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight, and the automobile companies of Ransom E. Olds (Oldsmobile) and Henry Ford (Ford Motor Company) popularized the assembly line in the early 20th century. The rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1920s and 30s led many European scientists, such as Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and John von Neumann, to immigrate to the United States. During World War II, the Manhattan Project. developed nuclear weapons, ushering in the Atomic Age. During the Cold War, competition for superior missile capability led to the Space Race between the United States and Soviet Union. The great American technological breakthroughs of the 20th century stem from the invention of the transistor in the 1950s, a key component in almost all modern electronics, which led to the development of microprocessors, software, personal computers, and the Internet. In 2022, the United States ranked 2nd in the Global Innovation Index. The United States also developed the Global Positioning System (GPS), the world's pre-eminent satellite navigation system.
, the United States receives approximately 79.1% of its energy from fossil fuels. In 2021, the largest source of the country's energy came from petroleum (36.1%), followed by natural gas (32.2%), coal (10.8%), renewable sources (12.5%), and nuclear power (8.4%). The United States constitutes less than 5% of the world's population, but consumes 17% of the world's energy. It accounts for about 25% of the world's petroleum consumption, while producing only 6% of the world's annual petroleum supply. The U.S. ranks as second-highest emitter of greenhouse gases, exceeded only by China.
Transportation
The United States's rail network, nearly all standard gauge, is the longest in the world, and exceeds 293564 km. It handles mostly freight, with intercity passenger service primarily provided by Amtrak, a government-managed company that took over services previously run by private companies, to all but four states.
The civil airline industry is entirely privately owned and has been largely deregulated since 1978, while most major airports are publicly owned. The three largest airlines in the world by passengers carried are U.S.-based; American Airlines is number one after its 2013 acquisition by US Airways. Of the world's 50 busiest passenger airports, 16 are in the United States, including the top five and the busiest, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport. , there are 19,919 airports in the United States, of which 5,217 are designated as "public use", including for general aviation and other activities.
Of the fifty busiest container ports, four are located in the United States, of which the busiest is the Port of Los Angeles. The country's inland waterways are the world's fifth-longest, and total 41009 km.
Population
The U.S. Census Bureau reported 331,449,281 residents as of April 1, 2020, making the United States the third most populous nation in the world, after China and India. According to the Bureau's U.S. Population Clock, on January 28, 2021, the U.S. population had a net gain of one person every 100 seconds, or about 864 people per day. In 2018, 52% of Americans age 15 and over were married, 6% were widowed, 10% were divorced, and 32% had never been married. In 2021, the total fertility rate for the U.S. stood at 1.7 children per woman, and it had the world's highest rate of children (23%) living in single-parent households in 2019.
The United States has a diverse population; 37 ancestry groups have more than one million members. White Americans with ancestry from Europe, the Middle East or North Africa, form the largest racial and ethnic group at 57.8% of the United States population. Hispanic and Latino Americans form the second-largest group and are 18.7% of the United States population. African Americans constitute the nation's third-largest ancestry group and are 12.1% of the total United States population. Asian Americans are the country's fourth-largest group, composing 5.9% of the United States population, while the country's 3.7 million Native Americans account for about 1%. In 2020, the median age of the United States population was 38.5 years.
Immigration
The United States has by far the highest number of immigrant population in the world, with 50,661,149 people. In 2018, there were almost 90 million immigrants and U.S.-born children of immigrants in the United States, accounting for 28% of the overall U.S. population. In 2017, out of the U.S. foreign-born population, some 45% (20.7 million) were naturalized citizens, 27% (12.3 million) were lawful permanent residents, 6% (2.2 million) were temporary lawful residents, and 23% (10.5 million) were unauthorized immigrants.
The United States led the world in refugee resettlement for decades, admitting more refugees than the rest of the world combined.
Language
In Puerto Rico, Spanish is more widely spoken than English.
According to the American Community Survey, in 2010 some 229 million people (out of the total U.S. population of 308 million) spoke only English at home. More than 37 million spoke Spanish at home, making it the second most commonly used language in the United States. Other languages spoken at home by one million people or more include Chinese (2.8 million), Tagalog (1.6 million), Vietnamese (1.4 million), French (1.3 million), Korean (1.1 million), and German (1 million).
Religion
Religious affiliation in the United States is among the most diverse in the world and varies significantly by region and age.
The First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of religion and forbids Congress from passing laws respecting its establishment. The country has the world's largest Christian population and a majority of Americans identify as Christian, predominately Catholic, mainline Protestant, or evangelical. According to Gallup, 58% and 17% reporting praying often or sometimes, respectively, and 46% and 26% reporting that religion plays a very important or fairly important role, respectively, in their lives. Most do not regularly attend religious services and have low confidence in religious institutions. Until the 1990s, the country was a significant outlier among highly developed countries, notably having a high level of religiosity and wealth, although this has lessened since.
According to Gallup and Pew 81%-90% of Americans believe in a higher power while "31% report attending a church, synagogue, mosque or temple weekly or nearly weekly today." In the "Bible Belt", located within the Southern United States, evangelical Protestantism plays a significant role culturally. New England and the Western United States tend to be less religious. Around 6% of Americans claim a non-Christian faith; the largest of which are Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The United States either has the first or second-largest Jewish population in the world, the largest outside of Israel. "Ceremonial deism" is common in American culture. Around 30% of Americans describe themselves as having no religion. Membership in a house of worship fell from 70% in 1999 to 47% in 2020.
Urbanization
About 82% of Americans live in urban areas, including suburbs; about half of those reside in cities with populations over 50,000. In 2008, 273 incorporated municipalities had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than one million residents, and four cities (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston) had populations exceeding two million. Many U.S. metropolitan populations are growing rapidly, particularly in the South and West.
Education
American public education is operated by state and local governments and regulated by the United States Department of Education through restrictions on federal grants. In most states, children are required to attend school from the age of five or six (beginning with kindergarten or first grade) until they turn 18 (generally bringing them through twelfth grade, the end of high school); some states allow students to leave school at 16 or 17. Of Americans 25 and older, 84.6% graduated from high school, 52.6% attended some college, 27.2% earned a bachelor's degree, and 9.6% earned graduate degrees. The basic literacy rate is approximately 99%.
The United States has many private and public institutions of higher education. There are also local community colleges with generally more open admission policies, shorter academic programs, and lower tuition. The U.S. spends more on education per student than any nation in the world, spending an average of $12,794 per year on public elementary and secondary school students in the 2016–2017 school year. As for public expenditures on higher education, the U.S. spends more per student than the OECD average, and more than all nations in combined public and private spending. Despite some student loan forgiveness programs in place, student loan debt has increased by 102% in the last decade, and exceeded 1.7 trillion dollars as of 2022.
The large majority of the world's top universities, as listed by various ranking organizations, are in the United States, including 19 of the top 25, and the most prestigious – the Harvard University. The country also has by far the most Nobel Prize winners in history, with 403 (having won 406 awards).
Botshabelo, Mpumalanga
Botshabelo, Mpumalanga ni msumba udoko mu boma likulu la Nkangala District Municipality, mu chigaŵa chikulu cha Mpumalanga, charu cha South Africa.
United States of America
Health
In a preliminary report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that U.S. life expectancy at birth had dropped to 76.4 years in 2021 (73.2 years for men and 79.1 years for women), down 0.9 years from 2020. This was the second year of overall decline, and the chief causes listed were the COVID-19 pandemic, accidents, drug overdoses, heart and liver disease, and suicides. Life expectancy was highest among Asians and Hispanics and lowest among Blacks and American Indian–Alaskan Native (AIAN) peoples. Starting in 1998, the average life expectancy in the U.S. fell behind that of other wealthy industrialized countries, and Americans' "health disadvantage" gap has been increasing ever since. The U.S. also has one of the highest suicide rates among high-income countries, and approximately one-third of the U.S. adult population is obese and another third is overweight.
In 2010, coronary artery disease, lung cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, and traffic collisions caused the most years of life lost in the U.S. Low back pain, depression, musculoskeletal disorders, neck pain, and anxiety caused the most years lost to disability. The most harmful risk factors were poor diet, tobacco smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, physical inactivity, and alcohol consumption. Alzheimer's disease, substance use disorders, kidney disease, cancer, and falls caused the most additional years of life lost over their age-adjusted 1990 per-capita rates. Teenage pregnancy and abortion rates in the U.S. are substantially higher than in other Western nations, especially among blacks and Hispanics.
The U.S. health care system far outspends that of any other nation, measured both in per capita spending and as a percentage of GDP but attains worse health care outcomes when compared to peer nations. The United States is the only developed nation without a system of universal health care, and a significant proportion of the population that does not carry health insurance. The U.S., however, is a global leader in medical innovation, measured either in terms of revenue or the number of new drugs and devices introduced. The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity ranked the United States 11th in its World Index of Healthcare Innovation; it concluded that the U.S. dominates science & technology, which "was on full display during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the U.S. government [delivered] coronavirus vaccines far faster than anyone had ever done before," but lags behind in fiscal sustainability, with "[government] spending [...] growing at an unsustainable rate."
Government-funded health care coverage for the poor (Medicaid, established in 1965) and for those age 65 and older (Medicare, begun in 1966) is available to Americans who meet the programs' income or age qualifications. In 2010, former President Obama passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or ACA, with the law roughly halving the uninsured share of the population according to the CDC. Multiple studies have concluded that ACA had reduced the mortality of enrollees. However, its legacy remains controversial.
Culture and society
Americans have traditionally been characterized by a unifying belief in an "American creed" emphasizing liberty, equality under the law, democracy, social equality, property rights, and a preference for limited government. Individualism, having a strong work ethic, competitiveness, and altruism  are also cited values. According to a 2016 study by the Charities Aid Foundation, Americans donated 1.44% of total GDP to charity, the highest in the world by a large margin. The United States is home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values, and exerts major cultural influence on a global scale,  with the phenomenon being termed Americanization. As such, the U.S. is considered a cultural superpower.
Nearly all present Americans or their ancestors came from Eurafrasia ("the Old World") within the past five centuries. Mainstream American culture is a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of European immigrants with influences from many other sources, such as traditions brought by slaves from Africa. More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has added to a cultural mix that has been described as a homogenizing melting pot, and a heterogeneous salad bowl, with immigrants contributing to, and often assimilating into, mainstream American culture. The American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants. Whether this perception is accurate has been a topic of debate. While mainstream culture holds that the United States is a classless society, scholars identify significant differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values. Americans tend to greatly value socioeconomic achievement, but being ordinary or average is promoted by some as a noble condition.
The United States is considered to have the strongest protections of free speech of any country in the world under the First Amendment, with the Supreme Court ruling that flag desecration, hate speech, blasphemy, and lese-majesty are all forms of protected expression. A 2016 Pew Research Center poll found that Americans were the most supportive of free expression of any polity measured. They are also the "most supportive of freedom of the press and the right to use the Internet without government censorship." It is a socially progressive country with permissive attitudes surrounding human sexuality. LGBT rights in the U.S. are among the most advanced in the world.
Literature and visual arts
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, American art and literature took most of their cues from Europe, contributing to Western culture. Writers such as Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau established a distinctive American literary voice by the middle of the 19th century. Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century's second half; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, is recognized as an essential American poet.
In the 1920s, the New Negro Movement coalesced in Harlem, where many writers had migrated (some coming from the South, others from the West Indies). Its pan-African perspective was a significant cultural export during the Jazz Age in Paris and as such was a key early influence on the négritude philosophy.
There have been a multitude of candidates for the "Great American Novel"—works seen as embodying and examining the essence and character of the United States—including Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987), and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (1996).
Thirteen U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, most recently Louise Glück, Bob Dylan, and Toni Morrison. Earlier laureates William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck have also been recognized as influential 20th century writers.
In the visual arts, the Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century movement in the tradition of European naturalism. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene. Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others experimented with new, individualistic styles, which would become known as American modernism.
Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock 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 postmodernism has brought global fame to American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry. Major photographers include Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, James Van Der Zee, Ansel Adams, and Gordon Parks.
Cinema and theater
The world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City in 1894, using the Kinetoscope. Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, although in the 21st century an increasing number of films are not made there, and film companies have been subject to the forces of globalization. The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, have been held annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1929, and the Golden Globe Awards have been held annually since January 1944.
Director D. W. Griffith, an American filmmaker during the silent film period, was central to the development of film grammar, and producer/entrepreneur Walt Disney was a leader in both animated film and movie merchandising. Directors such as John Ford redefined the image of the American Old West, and, like others such as John Huston, broadened the possibilities of cinema with location shooting. The industry enjoyed its golden years, in what is commonly referred to as the "Golden Age of Hollywood", from the early sound period until the early 1960s, with screen actors such as John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe becoming iconic figures. In the 1970s, "New Hollywood" or the "Hollywood Renaissance" was defined by grittier films influenced by French and Italian realist pictures of the post-war period.
The 21st century has been marked by the rise of the American streaming platforms, such as Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+, and Apple TV+, which came to rival traditional cinema.
Mainstream theater in the United States derives from the old European theatrical tradition and has been heavily influenced by the British theater. The central hub of the American theater scene has been Manhattan, with its divisions of Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway. Many movie and television stars have gotten their big break working in New York productions. Outside New York City, many cities have professional regional or resident theater companies that produce their own seasons, with some works being produced regionally with hopes of eventually moving to New York. The biggest-budget theatrical productions are musicals. U.S. theater also has an active community theater culture, which relies mainly on local volunteers who may not be actively pursuing a theatrical career.
Music
American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the same family or folk group for generations, and sometimes trace back to such origins as the British Isles, Mainland Europe, or Africa.
Among the country's earliest composers was William Billings who, born in Boston, composed patriotic hymns in the 1770s; Billings was a part of the First New England School, who dominated American music during its earliest stages. Anthony Heinrich was the most prominent composer before the Civil War. From the mid- to late 1800s, John Philip Sousa of the late Romantic era composed numerous military songs—particularly marches—and is regarded as one of the nation's greatest composers.