Mexico vs Panama

Mexico is 26 times larger than Panama — 1,964,375 against 75,420 km². Mexico is 29 times more populous than Panama — 131,946,900 against 4,571,189 people.

Side by side

Population density

Mexico is 1.1 times more densely populated than Panama — 67 against 61 people per km². Density is where area and population interact, and it often reverses the impression the headline figures give — a large country with a small population can feel emptier than a small crowded one by an enormous margin.

Practical differences

• Different currencies: the Mexican peso and the Panamanian balboa.
• Mexico spans 4 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.

Mexico

Mexico has the fourth-highest count of vertebrate and plant species of any country, and more reptile species than anywhere else. Chicxulub, under the northern Yucatán, is the roughly 180 km crater left by the asteroid impact 66 million years ago. The Sistema Sac Actun beneath the same peninsula is the longest known underwater cave system in the world, over 370 km surveyed.

Panama

The canal is 82 km long and lifts ships 26 m up to Gatún Lake and back down, using gravity-fed fresh water rather than pumps. Because the isthmus curves, a ship going from the Atlantic to the Pacific travels roughly south-east. The Darién Gap is the only break in the 30,000 km Pan-American Highway.

Neutral facts only. Nothing here addresses politics, government, economics or which country is preferable in any respect — population is the one figure that dates, and it carries its year.