This map renames each US state with a country that has a similar population

The US is the third-largest country in the world, with its population scattered across a continent-spanning landmass.

On Thursday we highlighted a map made by the American Enterprise Institute's Mark Perry that identified a country with about the same gross domestic product as each state. Here we do a similar analysis of population sizes.

We took population estimates for each country in the world from the CIA World Factbook and for all 50 states and the District of Columbia from the US Census Bureau's 2014 population estimates. For each state, we found the country with the closest population.

Here's the result:

state and country populations

(Business Insider/Andy Kiersz, data from CIA World Factbook and US Census Bureau)

Here's the map comparing economies that we highlighted previously:

USMap2013

(Carpe Diem)

These two maps show how massive and productive America's $16.7 trillion economy really is on a global scale.

For example, America's largest state economy is California. For 2013, the Golden State's GDP was about $2.05 trillion, roughly the same as Brazil's GDP ($2.25 trillion).

But Brazil's population is about 200.4 million, while California's is just 38.8 million (roughly the same as Algeria) — meaning California produces about the same as Brazil with about 80% fewer people.

Sometimes it helps to employ unconventional perspectives when thinking about the size of things.

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