Misc
Mapped: Visualizing the True Size of Africa
Mapped: The True Size of Africa
Take a look at any map, and it’s clear that the African continent is a big place.
However, despite the common perception that Africa is a large landmass, it’s still one that is vastly underestimated by most casual map viewers.
The reason for this is that the familiar Mercator map projection tends to distort our geographical view of the world in a crucial way — one that often leads to misconceptions about the relative sizes of both countries and continents.
A Geographical Jigsaw
Today’s infographic comes from Kai Krause and it shows the true size of Africa, as revealed by the borders of the countries that can fit within the continent’s shape.
The African continent has a land area of 30.37 million sq km (11.7 million sq mi) — enough to fit in the U.S., China, India, Japan, Mexico, and many European nations, combined.
Country | Land Area (sq. km) | Land Area (sq. mi) | % of Africa |
---|---|---|---|
🇺🇸 United States | 9.83 million | 3.80 million | 32.4% |
🇨🇳 China | 9.60 million | 3.71 million | 31.6% |
🇮🇳 India | 3.29 million | 1.27 million | 10.8% |
🇲🇽 Mexico | 1.96 million | 0.76 million | 6.5% |
🇵🇪 Peru | 1.29 million | 0.50 million | 4.2% |
🇫🇷 France | 0.64 million | 0.25 million | 2.1% |
🇪🇸 Spain | 0.51 million | 0.20 million | 1.7% |
🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea | 0.46 million | 0.18 million | 1.5% |
🇸🇪 Sweden | 0.45 million | 0.17 million | 1.5% |
🇯🇵 Japan | 0.38 million | 0.15 million | 1.3% |
🇩🇪 Germany | 0.36 million | 0.14 million | 1.2% |
🇳🇴 Norway | 0.32 million | 0.13 million | 1.1% |
🇮🇹 Italy | 0.30 million | 0.12 million | 1.0% |
🇳🇿 New Zealand | 0.27 million | 0.10 million | 0.9% |
🇬🇧 United Kingdom | 0.24 million | 0.09 million | 0.8% |
🇳🇵 Nepal | 0.15 million | 0.06 million | 0.5% |
🇧🇩 Bangladesh | 0.15 million | 0.06 million | 0.5% |
🇬🇷 Greece | 0.13 million | 0.05 million | 0.4% |
Total | 30.33 million sq. km | 11.71 million sq. mi | 99.9% |
You could add together all of the landmasses above and they would not equate to the geographical footprint of Africa, which itself is home to 54 countries and 1.2 billion people.
Editor’s note: The above table is slightly different from the countries shown in the visualization, which focuses more on fitting recognizable country shapes into the geographical shape of Africa.
Why the Misconception?
Interestingly, the problem with maps is not that Africa is sized incorrectly.
Using the animation below, you’ll see that Africa is actually the most accurately sized continent using the common Mercator map projection:
The Mercator projection attempts to place the spherical shape of the world onto a cylinder, causing areas closest to the poles to be “stretched”.
Africa, which straddles the Equator, barely changes in size — meanwhile, the countries furthest from the Equator become inflated from their true sizes on this type of map.
For those of us living in Western countries, this is an interesting dilemma to consider.
This means that the sizes of European and North American countries are distorted, giving us an inaccurate mental “measuring stick” for judging the relative sizes of other countries.
This has implications not only for Africa, but for the whole Southern Hemisphere: South America, India, the Middle East, and even Australia are “bigger” than they may initially appear on a map.
United States
Mapped: How Much Does it Take to be the Top 1% in Each U.S. State?
An annual income anywhere between $360,000-$950,000 can grant entry into the top 1%—depending on where you live in America.

How Much Does it Take to be the Top 1% in Each U.S. State?
There’s an old saying: everyone thinks that they’re middle-class.
But how many people think, or know, that they really belong to the top 1% in the country?
Data from personal finance advisory services company, SmartAsset, reveals the annual income threshold at which a household can be considered part of the top 1% in their state.
Some states demand a much higher yearly earnings from their residents to be a part of the rarefied league, but which ones are they, and how much does one need to earn to make it to the very top echelon of income?
Ranking U.S. States By Income to Be in the Top 1%
At the top of the list, a household in Connecticut needs to earn nearly $953,000 annually to be part of the one-percenters. This is the highest minimum threshold across the country.
In the same region, Massachusetts requires a minimum annual earnings of $903,401 from its top 1% residents.
Here’s the list of all 50 U.S. states along with the annual income needed to be in the 1%.
Rank | State | Top 1% Income Threshold | Top 1% Tax Rate (% of annual income) |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Connecticut | $952,902 | 28.40% |
2 | Massachusetts | $903,401 | 27.15% |
3 | California | $844,266 | 26.95% |
4 | New Jersey | $817,346 | 28.01% |
5 | Washington | $804,853 | 25.99% |
6 | New York | $776,662 | 28.29% |
7 | Colorado | $709,092 | 25.86% |
8 | Florida | $694,987 | 25.82% |
9 | Illinois | $660,810 | 26.35% |
10 | New Hampshire | $659,037 | 26.25% |
11 | Wyoming | $656,118 | 24.79% |
12 | Virginia | $643,848 | 26.11% |
N/A | National Average | $652,657 | N/A |
13 | Maryland | $633,333 | 25.94% |
14 | Texas | $631,849 | 25.83% |
15 | Utah | $630,544 | 23.77% |
16 | Minnesota | $626,451 | 25.53% |
17 | Nevada | $603,751 | 25.19% |
18 | South Dakota | $590,373 | 22.99% |
19 | Pennsylvania | $588,702 | 24.95% |
20 | North Dakota | $585,556 | 24.76% |
21 | Georgia | $585,397 | 25.06% |
22 | Oregon | $571,813 | 24.66% |
23 | Arizona | $564,031 | 25.22% |
24 | Idaho | $560,040 | 23.17% |
25 | North Carolina | $559,762 | 25.31% |
26 | Montana | $559,656 | 24.46% |
27 | Kansas | $554,912 | 25.03% |
28 | Rhode Island | $548,531 | 25.26% |
29 | Tennessee | $548,329 | 25.12% |
30 | Alaska | $542,824 | 25.38% |
31 | Nebraska | $535,651 | 24.10% |
32 | Delaware | $529,928 | 25.37% |
33 | Vermont | $518,039 | 23.63% |
34 | Wisconsin | $517,321 | 24.90% |
35 | South Carolina | $508,427 | 24.40% |
36 | Michigan | $504,671 | 25.01% |
37 | Maine | $502,605 | 24.04% |
38 | Missouri | $500,626 | 24.93% |
39 | Ohio | $500,253 | 25.09% |
40 | Hawaii | $495,263 | 24.12% |
41 | Iowa | $483,985 | 24.09% |
42 | Indiana | $473,685 | 24.55% |
43 | Alabama | $470,341 | 23.82% |
44 | Oklahoma | $460,172 | 23.68% |
45 | Louisiana | $458,269 | 24.80% |
46 | Arkansas | $450,700 | 21.11% |
47 | Kentucky | $445,294 | 24.14% |
48 | New Mexico | $411,395 | 23.35% |
49 | Mississippi | $381,919 | 23.04% |
50 | West Virginia | $367,582 | 23.26% |
N/A | National Median Household Income | $75,000 | N/A |
California ($844,266), New Jersey ($817,346), and Washington ($804,853) round out the top five states with the highest minimum thresholds to make it to their exclusive rich club.
On the other end of the spectrum, the top one-percenters in West Virginia make a minimum of $367,582 a year, the lowest of all the states, and about one-third of the threshold in Connecticut. And just down southwest of the Mountain State, Mississippi’s one-percenters need to make at least $381,919 a year to qualify for the 1%.
A quick glance at the map above also reveals some regional insights.
The Northeast and West Coast, with their large urban and economic hubs, have higher income entry requirements for the top 1% than states in the American South.
This also correlates to the median income by state, a measure showing Massachusetts households make nearly $90,000 a year, compared to Mississippians who take home $49,000 annually.
How Much Do the Top 1% Pay in Taxes?
Meanwhile, if one does make it to the top 1% in states like Connecticut and Massachusetts, expect to pay more in taxes than other states, according to SmartAsset’s analysis.
The one-percenters in the top five states pay, on average, between 26–28% of their income in tax, compared to those in the bottom five who pay between 21–23%.
And this pattern exists through the dataset, with higher top 1% income thresholds correlating with higher average tax rates for the wealthy.
State Ranks | Median Tax Rate |
---|---|
Top 10 | 26.65% |
20-30 | 25.09% |
30-40 | 24.65% |
10-20 | 25.07% |
40-50 | 23.75% |
These higher tax rates point to attempts to reign in the increasing wealth disparity in the nation where the top 1% hold more than one-third of the country’s wealth, up from 27% in 1989.
Where Does This Data Come From?
Source: SmartAsset’s America’s Top 1% Is Different in Each State uses data from 2020 individual tax filings from the IRS, adjusted to 2023 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index.
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