South Korea has 1,337 people per square mile and Belgium has 976. Successful developed countries that include a healthy mix of cities, suburbs, and countryside manage to far exceed tripling America’s population density.

Many, many countries are far denser than this, not just city-states like Singapore (more than 20,000 per square mile).

If the aggregate population tripled, then density would too. Right now the United States has about 93 people per square mile. Yglesias clearly exaggerates when he says that “America is empty,” but our nation is actually much less densely populated than you might think: In reality, many of the additional people would live in cities or towns, where they would occupy far less than two acres each. This sort of exercise in simple division gives the illusion that America could accommodate a population of one billion only at the cost of intense overcrowding and the loss of tranquil open spaces. In the aftermath of the American Civil War, the Radical Republicans promised freed slaves “forty acres and a mule” British reformers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries called for a somewhat more modest “three acres and a cow.” The land area of the United States is only about two billion acres, so Yglesias cannot quite offer even the latter (and he doesn’t mention farm animals). Hence the book’s attention-grabbing title: One Billion Americans. In his latest book, Vox’s Matthew Yglesias argues that America not only could but in fact should dramatically increase its population even further, both by admitting more immigrants and by offering incentives for people to have more children. A big number, right? It depends who you ask.

population has grown to around 330 million, an increase of more than 20 million since the last decennial count in 2010. When the results of the 2020 census are finally tabulated, they will likely show that the U.S.

Matt yglesias 1 billion