<P> The Northeastern United States, also referred to as the American Northeast or simply the Northeast, is a geographical region of the United States bordered to the north by Canada, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Southern United States, and to the west by the Midwestern United States . The Northeast is one of the four regions defined by the United States Census Bureau for the collection and analysis of statistics . The Census Bureau - defined region has a total area of 181,324 sq mi (469,630 km) with 162,257 sq mi (420,240 km) of that being land mass . Although it lacks a unified cultural identity, the Northeastern region is the nation's most economically developed, densely populated, and culturally diverse region . Of the nation's four census regions, the Northeast is the second most urban, with 85 percent of its population residing in urban areas, led by the West with 90 percent . </P> <P> The Census Bureau has defined the Northeast region as comprising nine states: from northeast to southwest, they are New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania . The region is subdivided into New England (the six states east of New York) and the Mid-Atlantic states (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania). </P> <P> This definition has been essentially unchanged since 1880 and is widely used as a standard for data tabulation . The Census Bureau has acknowledged the limitations of this definition and the potential merits of a proposal created after the 1950 census that would include changing regional boundaries to include Delaware, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. with the Mid-Atlantic states, but ultimately decided that "the new system did not win enough overall acceptance among data users to warrant adoption as an official new set of general - purpose State groupings . The previous development of many series of statistics, arranged and issued over long periods of time on the basis of the existing State groupings, favored the retention of the summary units of the current regions and divisions ." The Census Bureau confirmed in 1994 that it would continue to "review the components of the regions and divisions to ensure that they continue to represent the most useful combinations of States and State equivalents ." </P>

States in the northeast region of the us