The U.Due south. House of Representatives has one voting member for every 747,000 or so Americans. That's by far the highest population-to-representative ratio among a peer group of industrialized democracies, and the highest it's been in U.S. history. And with the size of the House capped by law and the country'south population continually growing, the representation ratio probable volition simply get bigger.

In the century-plus since the number of Firm seats beginning reached its current total of 435 (excluding nonvoting delegates), the representation ratio has more than tripled – from one representative for every 209,447 people in 1910 to one for every 747,184 as of last twelvemonth.

That ratio, mind you, is for the nation as a whole. The ratios for individual states vary considerably, mainly considering of the Business firm'south stock-still size and the Constitution'due south requirement that each land, no thing its population, accept at to the lowest degree one representative. Currently, Montana's 1,050,493 people accept just one House member; Rhode Isle has slightly more people (1,059,639), but that'southward enough to give it two representatives – one for every 529,820 Rhode Islanders.

The U.S. findings in this post are based on Pew Inquiry Eye analyses of House membership changes since 1789 and historical population data (actual when available, estimated when non). They exclude territories, the Commune of Columbia and other U.S. possessions that don't have voting representation in the House. The assay was complicated somewhat by the fact that new states often were admitted after a decennial census merely before the apportionment law based on that census took effect (ordinarily about three years afterward). In such cases, the new states were analyzed as if they had been states at the time of the census.

How the House reached 435

The start Congress (1789-91) had 65 House members, the number provided for in the Constitution until the outset census could be held. Based on an estimated population for the 13 states of 3.7 million, there was one representative for every 57,169 people. (At the time, Kentucky was part of Virginia, Maine was function of Massachusetts, and Tennessee was part of North Carolina. Vermont governed itself as an independent democracy, despite territorial claims by New York.)

By the fourth dimension the showtime apportionment neb took effect in March 1793, Vermont and Kentucky already had joined the Union; the 15 states had a total population of iii.89 million. Since the apportionment law provided for 105 House members, there was ane representative for every 37,081 people. (According to the Constitution at the time, only three-fifths of the nation's 694,280 slaves were counted for apportionment purposes; using that method, the ratio was approximately one representative for every 34,436.)

For more than than a century thereafter, as the U.S. population grew and new states were admitted, the House's membership grew also (except for ii short-lived contractions in the mid-1800s). The expansion by and large was managed in such a fashion that, even as the representation ratio steadily rose, states seldom lost seats from one apportionment to the next.

That process ran aground in the 1920s. The 1920 census revealed a "major and continuing shift" of the U.South. population from rural to urban areas; when the time came to reapportion the House, equally a Census Bureau summary puts information technology, rural representatives "worked to derail the procedure, fearful of losing political power to the cities." In fact, the Business firm wasn't reapportioned until after the 1930 census; the 1929 law authorizing that census also capped the size of the Firm at 435. And in that location it has remained, except for a brief menses from 1959 to 1963 when the bedroom temporarily added two members to represent the newly admitted states of Alaska and Hawaii.

There have been occasional proposals to add more than seats to the Business firm to reflect population growth. One is the and then-called "Wyoming Rule," which would brand the population of the smallest state (currently Wyoming) the basis for the representation ratio. Depending on which variant of that rule were adopted, the House would have had 545 to 547 members following the 2010 census.

However, a contempo Pew Research Centre survey found express public back up for calculation new House seats. Only 28% of Americans said the Business firm should be expanded, versus 51% who said it should remain at 435 members. When historical context was added to the question, support for expansion rose a bit, to 34%, with the additional support coming mainly from Democrats.

How the U.Southward. compares globally

The Business firm'south hefty representation ratio makes the U.s.a. an outlier among its peers. Our research finds that the U.Southward. ratio is the highest amongst the 35 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, near of them highly adult, autonomous states.

Nosotros took the most recent population approximate for each OECD nation and divided information technology by the electric current number of seats in the lower chamber of each national legislature (or, in the case of unicameral bodies, the unmarried sleeping room). After the U.S., the two countries with the highest representation ratios are Nihon (i lawmaker for every 272,108 Japanese) and Mexico (ane for every 247,965 Mexicans). Iceland had the everyman ratio: one member of the Althing for every 5,500 or so Icelanders.

While much of the cross-national disparity in representation ratios can be explained by the large population of the U.Southward. (with more than than 325 million people it'south the largest land in the OECD), that'south non the only reason. Eight OECD countries have larger lower chambers than the U.Due south. House, with Germany's Bundestag topping the league table with 709 members. The British House of Commons has 650 MPs (Members of Parliament); Italy's Chamber of Deputies has 630 lawmakers.

Even if Congress decided to aggrandize the size of the Firm, the big U.S. population puts some practical limits on how much the representation ratio could be lowered. If the Firm were to grow every bit big as the Bundestag, for instance, the ratio would fall only to one representative per 458,428 people. In order to reduce the ratio to where it was later the 1930 census, the House would need to have i,156 members. (That would withal exist smaller than Cathay's National People'south Congress, the largest national legislature in the world with ii,980 members.)