Country comparison: Laos / United States

This country comparison is a concise, tabular overview of numerous data from our respective country pages for Laos 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

	Laos	United States
Region:	Southeast Asia	North America
Area:	236,800 km²	9,831,510 km²
Official language:	Lao	English
Government form:	Republic (communist one-party system)	Federal presidential republic
Independent since:	1953 AD	1776 AD
Capital:	Vientiane	Washington, D.C.

Population

Details for Laos and the United States

	Laos	United States
Population:	7,379,000	331,894,000
Inhabitants/km²:	31.2	33.8
Life expectancy males:	Ø 66 years	Ø 75 years
Life expectancy females:	Ø 70 years	Ø 80 years
Average age:	Ø 24.0 years	Ø 38.5 years
Birthrate:	22.66 ‰	10.90 ‰
Deathrate:	6.32 ‰	10.30 ‰
Migrationrate:	-1.17 ‰	3.02 ‰

Quality of life

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

	Laos	United States
Political stability:	71	65
Civil rights:	20	82
Health:	30	71
Climate:	48	66
Cost of Living:	73	37
Popularity:	35	71

Economy

Details for Laos and the United States

	Laos	United States
Currency:	Kip (1 LAK = 100 At)	US Dollar (1 USD =100 Cents)
Unemployment rate:	1.3 %	5.5 %
Inflation rate:	3.76 %	4.70 %
Cost of Living: (USA = 100%)	33.49 %	100.00 %
Commercial taxes and contributions:	24.10 %	36.60 %
Average income:	2,520 US$	70,430 US$
Corruption index:	70 (very bad)	33 (moderate)

	LAO: total	per 1000 inh.	USA: total	per 1000 inh.
Gross domestic product:	18,827 M US$	2.55 M US$	22,996,100 M US$	69.29 M US$
Gross national product:	18,583 M US$	2.52 M US$	23,374,712 M US$	70.43 M US$
Exported goods:	6,461 M US$	0.88 M US$	2,532,951 M US$	7.63 M US$
Imported goods:	5,816 M US$	0.79 M US$	3,394,346 M US$	10.23 M US$

Infrastructure

Details for Laos and the United States

	LAO: total	per 1000 inh.	USA: total	per 1000 inh.
Roadways:	39,586 km	5.36 km	6,586,610 km	19.85 km
Waterways:	4,600 km	0.62 km	41,009 km	0.12 km
Harbours:	1	0.0001	3,627	0.0109
Passenger airports:	8	0.0011	436	0.0013

Energy balance

Details for Laos and the United States

	LAO: total	per 1000 inh.	USA: total	per 1000 inh.
Energy consumption:	5.47 bn kWh	741,392.41 kWh	3,902.00 bn kWh	11.76 m kWh
Energy production:	29.74 bn kWh	4.03 m kWh	4,095.00 bn kWh	12.34 m kWh
Energy export:	8.47 bn kWh	1.15 m kWh	9.70 bn kWh	29,211.16 kWh
Energy imports:	2.50 bn kWh	338,782.86 kWh	72.72 bn kWh	219,106.27 kWh
CO2 emissions:	18.71 m t	2,535.45 t	4.82 bn t	14,515.85 t

Telecommunication

Details for Laos and the United States

	Laos	United States
International dialing:	+856	+1
Internet domain:	.la	.us

	LAO total	LAO per 1000 inh.	USA total	USA per 1000 inh.
Landlines:	1,491,000	202	101,526,000	306
Mobile cellulars:	4,100,000	556	351,477,000	1059
Internet server:	1,532	0	505,000,000	1522
Internet users:	2,494,223	338	301,691,414	909
Broadband Internet:	128,000	17	121,176,000	365

Healthcare system

Details for Laos and the United States

	Laos	United States
Hospital beds per 1000 inh.:	1.50	2.87
Physicians per 1000 inh.:	0.50	2.59
Diabetes:	6.4 %	10.8 %
HIV:	0.19 %	0.20 %
Tuberculosis:	1.49 ‰	0.02 ‰
Tuberculosis cure rate:	90.0 %	75.0 %
Smokers:	31.8 %	23.0 %

Climate

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

	Laos	United States
Daytime temperatures:	32.0 °C	18.7 °C
Nighttime temperatures:	21.9 °C	7.1 °C
Rel. humidity:	75 %	67 %
Rain days:	9.6	7.1
Sunshine hours per day:	6.1	7.2

Native languages

	Laos	United States
English:	n/a	82.1 %
Lao:	67.2 %	n/a
Khmer:	16.5 %	n/a
Spanish:	n/a	10.7 %
Thai:	7.8 %	n/a
Lao-Soung:	5.2 %	n/a
Chinese:	n/a	0.9 %
French:	n/a	0.7 %
German:	n/a	0.6 %
Italian:	n/a	0.6 %
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 %
Portuguese:	n/a	0.2 %
Russian:	n/a	0.2 %
Eskimo:	n/a	0.0 %
other:	3.3 %	2.6 %

Religions

	Laos	United States
Christianity:	1.5 %	78.5 %
Buddhism:	66.8 %	0.7 %
Jewry:	n/a	1.8 %
Sikhism:	n/a	1.6 %
Islam:	n/a	1.1 %
Hinduism:	n/a	1.0 %
other:	31.7 %	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.

Laos	United States
All information: Laos	All information: United States
Select other countries: