Comparing the East Coast and West Coast: Key Differences and Similarities

East versus West. A while back I did a video comparing the two sides of Germany. Even though the country reunited in the late 20th century, many factors still point out deep differences between the two sides of the country. This got me thinking, which other countries have big differences between regions? In this video, we're going to be comparing two regions of the United States, the East versus the West coasts. First, it's important to point out that the two coasts are together the most developed and rich regions of the country. When you compare each or the two together with the country's interior, the numbers speak for themselves. The biggest example is population, with the vast majority living in these areas. But comparing the coasts with the interior would be a little boring because the coasts would do better in pretty much all factors, so I want to take into account the two of them and answer the question, how do the east and west coasts of the US compare? The first differences we should take into account are, I think, geographical and territorial ones. As the name indicates, the West Coast is in the West and the East is in the East. The East Coast borders the Atlantic Ocean and Canada, while the West borders the Pacific Ocean, Canada, but also Mexico. Being three hours ahead, the East Coast technically has 14 states, very closely related to the initial 13 colonies that rebelled against the British and first established the United States. One exception, among others, being Florida, which was still Spanish at the time. For this video I chose to include Pennsylvania and Vermont making the total of the east coast 16. I know they're not on the east coast itself but it makes sense to me to include them on this list. While the west coast only has three states some people include Nevada and Arizona in their west coast concept but I didn't in this video and the official west coast is also made up of Alaska and Hawaii which I equally didn't include. Interestingly all of Florida is further south than California. I don't think we can really get this perception when looking at maps. When it comes to size and population, the size of the east coast is over 1 million square kilometers, made up of the states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. And its population is around 130 million, almost 40% of the United States total population. The West Coast size is smaller at 863,000 square kilometers. Now, it is smaller, but not that much smaller, which means that these three states are much bigger than many of the other 16, and its population is around 50 million. Less than half, almost only one-third of the East Coast's, only 15% of the country's total. It's interesting that the sizes aren't that different, with the East only being slightly bigger, but much more populated, showing us how population density in the east is much higher than the west. This map of population density demonstrates that there's a lot more green areas in the west. The whole eastern area of the country is much more populated even. There's only a few urban areas in the middle and west of the country on almost a single strip of high density land in the west coast. This likely has to do with the fact that the east was colonized first, and expansion moved in the direction of east to west. First the 13 colonies, then the territory ceded by the British, then the Louisiana Purchase and then the Mexican Cession. This also justifies another difference between the coasts which is the existence of older cities and structures. Universities for instance are much older in the east coast with some dating to the 18th century. California is the only US state in the west that was settled earlier than the rest but still later than the whole of the east. When it comes to temperature it varies somewhat equally as you go north and south of each of the coasts. The north is colder and the south is warmer. However even if temperatures are similar, the weather types are different. In this map, we can see the Koppen climate types in each region. The Koppen climate classification is one of the most widely used systems, first published by German-Russian climatologist Vladimir Koppen in 1884. It divides climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on seasonal precipitation and temperature patterns. Here, we can see California is mostly Mediterranean type weather, Oregon is the same, but less warm, while Washington is more oceanic. In the east coast, the north is warm-humid continental, with the rest being closer to subtropical, although these colors are a little confusing. Before we move on with the video, a quick message from today's sponsor and friend of the channel, NordVPN. A while back, I bought tickets to fly on vacation, and little did I know that the airline suffered a hack, and a lot of its passenger details were leaked. By having NordVPN and its associated tools, NordLocker and NordPass, I was notified of this breach as soon as it happened and was able to secure all my details before anything was compromised. NordVPN is honestly the best VPN out there. 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However, as you go further south in each of them, more conservatism also shows up. The states on the northeast coast are, in my opinion, some of the most progressive in the US, but California itself is as well. The whole of the west coast has democratic governors, which are also common in the northeast, while the majority of the east coast has republicans as governors. Results that are similar in other types of elections. Economically, the west is more of a center for technological companies and new startups, while the east is more the financial center of the country, especially up north. The unemployment rate is something that changes all the time, but right now it seems pretty balanced between the two coasts. Regarding the GDP, in this map made by a friend and partner of the channel, Statista, we can see the contribution each state makes, percentage-wise, for the national GDP. We can instantly tell that the east coast has a higher GDP percentage than the west. Again, 14 something states versus 3 is normal to be the case. But we must pay attention to California with the GDP almost equivalent to the whole country of the United Kingdom being the highest in the country accounting for 14% to the national value over New York and Florida combined. When it comes to HDI the northeast coast is the most developed of the entire country while all the west coast does pretty well too. The south which also reaches into the east coast is the area that does less well. Regarding salary, median monthly earnings are like this, the same thing happens. The north has a higher median income than the south in both coasts. The southern part of the east coast is the one with the lowest income, this is per household and not individual by the way. But making a lot of money doesn't mean that much if the cost of living is immense. Salaries in New York might be higher, but so is the cost to rent an apartment. This map shows us the average cost of living and in it we can see that in all of the west coast plus the northeast coast, the cost of living is over 100, which I think means on average it takes more to live than you can earn every month. But besides all these economic indicators, it's also important to take a look at the income inequality. Maybe there's a lot of money being made, but most of it is concentrated on a very small minority of the population. This map shows us that information. The Gini index is only reasonable in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. None of the West Coast is in the green either, with only Washington being okay in the yellow. Back in the East Coast, New York, Connecticut are the worst, along with Washington DC. When it comes to the population's characteristics, this map shows us the counties where non-Caucasian people have a high percentage of the population. Both coasts have a high population of Caucasians. Some locations where people of Asian descent are more common, although there are a lot more of these in the East than the West, but the real difference is in the South. In California, there is a high presence of people of Latino or Hispanic descent, something that is only common in South Florida, while the remainder of the Southern East Coast has a high prevalence of African American people as well. This other map, focused on metropolitan areas, shows us how there are many more in the East compared to the West. Regarding religion, there are a lot of non-Hispanic Catholics in the Northeast, but also across all the west coast. Hispanic Catholics are very present in South California as well. African American Protestants are almost exclusive to the southern east coast, while non-Hispanic Protestants are pretty much overwhelmingly the majority across the east coast, but also very present in Oregon and Washington. In this type of videos we usually compare army sizes, obviously we can't do that here, with regions of the same country, they have the same army. But we can look at how many people are enlisted per state in this map, that becomes evident. the east coast clearly has more enlisted personnel than the west, which makes sense because they have more population. A lot of these maps end up showing us the whole of the US states, but I try to focus on the comparison between the ones on the two coasts, since that's what this video is about. So, that is how the east and west coasts of the United States compare in a few topics, geographically, territorially, but also in other indicators like population, development, cost of living, GDP, among many others that shows us all the aspects in which the two sets of states differ. The comparison is a little unfair in some aspects. Despite their size being similar, the East has way more states and way more people than the West, and it was settled and developed much earlier in history. But still, the West has been able to surpass it in a few of these indicators. Are there any other comparison factors I missed, and which other countries or regions should I compare in another video? Let me know in the comments. Thanks so much for watching this video. Subscribe if you want and I will see you next time for more general knowledge.