Country comparison: Switzerland / United States

This country comparison is a concise, tabular overview of numerous data from our respective country pages for Switzerland and United States. For further information and explanations, we provide many details per country that go far beyond this comparison. For example, there are separate sub-pages for both countries on economy, climate, energy, refugees, inflation, population and much more.
In addition, we offer several international comparisons on individual topics, which are also linked on this page.

General information

	Switzerland	United States
Region:	Western Europe	North America
Area:	41,290 km²	9,831,510 km²
Official language:	German	English
Government form:	Federal republic	Federal presidential republic
Independent since:	1499 AD	1776 AD
Capital:	Bern	Washington, D.C.

Population

Details for Switzerland and the United States

	Switzerland	United States
Population:	8,698,000	331,894,000
Inhabitants/km²:	210.6	33.8
Life expectancy males:	Ø 81 years	Ø 75 years
Life expectancy females:	Ø 85 years	Ø 80 years
Average age:	Ø 42.7 years	Ø 38.5 years
Birthrate:	9.90 ‰	10.90 ‰
Deathrate:	8.80 ‰	10.30 ‰
Migrationrate:	4.52 ‰	3.02 ‰

Quality of life

Values from 0 (bad) to 100 (very good)
See also: Explanations and country ranking on quality of life

	Switzerland	United States
Political stability:	91	65
Civil rights:	99	82
Health:	93	71
Climate:	34	66
Cost of Living:	44	37
Popularity:	40	71

Economy

Details for Switzerland and the United States

	Switzerland	United States
Currency:	Swiss franc (1 CHF = 100 Rappen)	US dollar (1 USD =100 Cents)
Unemployment rate:	5.3 %	5.5 %
Inflation rate:	0.58 %	4.70 %
Cost of Living: (USA = 100%)	142.40 %	100.00 %
Commercial taxes and contributions:	28.80 %	36.60 %
Average income:	90,360 US$	70,430 US$
Corruption index:	16 (good)	33 (moderate)

	CHE: total	per 1000 inh.	USA: total	per 1000 inh.
Gross domestic product:	812,867 M US$	93.46 M US$	22,996,100 M US$	69.29 M US$
Gross national product:	785,904 M US$	90.36 M US$	23,374,712 M US$	70.43 M US$
Exported goods:	567,175 M US$	65.21 M US$	2,532,951 M US$	7.63 M US$
Imported goods:	462,337 M US$	53.16 M US$	3,394,346 M US$	10.23 M US$

Infrastructure

Details for Switzerland and the United States

	CHE: total	per 1000 inh.	USA: total	per 1000 inh.
Roadways:	71,557 km	8.23 km	6,586,610 km	19.85 km
Railways:	3,236 km	0.37 km	293,564 km	0.88 km
Waterways:	1,292 km	0.15 km	41,009 km	0.12 km
Harbours:	20	0.0023	3,627	0.0109
Passenger airports:	5	0.0006	436	0.0013

Energy balance

Details for Switzerland and the United States

	CHE: total	per 1000 inh.	USA: total	per 1000 inh.
Energy consumption:	58.46 bn kWh	6.72 m kWh	3,902.00 bn kWh	11.76 m kWh
Energy production:	59.01 bn kWh	6.78 m kWh	4,095.00 bn kWh	12.34 m kWh
Energy export:	30.17 bn kWh	3.47 m kWh	9.70 bn kWh	29,211.16 kWh
Energy imports:	34.10 bn kWh	3.92 m kWh	72.72 bn kWh	219,106.27 kWh
CO2 emissions:	37.38 m t	4,297.68 t	4.82 bn t	14,515.85 t

Telecommunication

Details for Switzerland and the United States

	Switzerland	United States
International dialing:	+41	+1
Internet domain:	.ch	.us

	CHE total	CHE per 1000 inh.	USA total	USA per 1000 inh.
Landlines:	3,071,296	353	101,526,000	306
Mobile cellulars:	11,017,913	1267	351,477,000	1059
Internet server:	5,301,000	609	505,000,000	1522
Internet users:	8,193,255	942	301,691,414	909
Broadband Internet:	4,028,238	463	121,176,000	365

Healthcare system

Details for Switzerland and the United States

	Switzerland	United States
Hospital beds per 1000 inh.:	4.63	2.87
Physicians per 1000 inh.:	4.24	2.59
Diabetes:	5.7 %	10.8 %
HIV:	0.05 %	0.20 %
Tuberculosis:	0.05 ‰	0.02 ‰
Tuberculosis cure rate:	68.0 %	75.0 %
Smokers:	25.5 %	23.0 %

Climate

We also provide a more detailed climate comparison of both countries.
The data for each country can be found here: Switzerland and United States

	Switzerland	United States
Daytime temperatures:	15.1 °C	18.7 °C
Nighttime temperatures:	6.3 °C	7.1 °C
Water temperature:	10.8 °C	17.7 °C
Rel. humidity:	76 %	67 %
Rain days:	9.5	7.1
Sunshine hours per day:	5.2	7.2

Native languages

	Switzerland	United States
English:	n/a	82.1 %
German:	62.5 %	0.6 %
French:	21.3 %	0.7 %
Spanish:	1.1 %	10.7 %
Italian:	8.3 %	0.6 %
Croatian:	1.4 %	n/a
Albanian:	1.3 %	n/a
Portuguese:	1.2 %	0.2 %
Chinese:	n/a	0.9 %
Romansh:	0.5 %	n/a
Tagalog:	n/a	0.4 %
Korean:	n/a	0.3 %
Polish:	n/a	0.3 %
Vietnamese:	n/a	0.2 %
Japanese:	n/a	0.2 %
Russian:	n/a	0.2 %
Eskimo:	n/a	0.0 %
other:	2.4 %	2.6 %

Religions

	Switzerland	United States
Christianity:	70.8 %	78.5 %
Nondenominational:	21.4 %	n/a
Islam:	4.9 %	1.1 %
Jewry:	0.2 %	1.8 %
Sikhism:	n/a	1.6 %
Hinduism:	n/a	1.0 %
Buddhism:	n/a	0.7 %
other:	2.7 %	15.3 %

Data inventory and updates

A country comparison like this can be based on several hundred individual data items from dozens of different sources. All data are based on the most recent data available to us. Most of them refer to the previous year and are updated around March of the following year. If a country has not yet published data for the most recent or penultimate year, we present the most recent official data. Updates are made on an ongoing basis depending on the subject area or source, so there is no single "cutoff date" for this comparison. Sources for almost all data can be found on our respective country pages.

Switzerland	United States
All information: Switzerland	All information: United States
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