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Two states outnumber Australia
The lower 48 states hold more than 300 million people, while Australia has a little more than 26 million. California has more than 39 million and Texas more than 28 million. England on its own, without the rest of the UK, has more than double Australia's population.
Seven islands much smaller than Australia also have more people: Great Britain, Honshu, Luzon, Mindanao, Java, Sumatra, and Madagascar. Java alone has nearly six times Australia's population on an island six times smaller.
Cities pass it too. The Tokyo, Jakarta, and Delhi metropolitan areas each have more people than the whole continent, and the Shanghai and Seoul metro areas have roughly similar numbers. Sao Paulo, Mexico City, New York City, Cairo, Lagos, Mumbai, and Moscow all have comparable metropolitan populations.
Why is Java so crowded?
Java is a chain of volcanoes, and volcanic ash weathers into some of the most fertile soil on Earth. That soil, combined with plentiful rain, supported intensive rice farming that could feed dense villages for centuries. A large farming population also made the island attractive to rulers and traders. Java is home to dozens of active volcanoes.
Why do megacities keep growing?
Economists call it agglomeration: firms and workers gain by clustering, because they share suppliers, hire from a large pool of skills, and pick up ideas from each other. The economist Alfred Marshall laid out these three forces in his 1890 book Principles of Economics. Transit systems and tall buildings let tens of millions of people share a single urban area. Tokyo's metropolitan area ranks among the largest urban areas in the world.
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