How Many Americans Have A Passport?
How many Americans have a passport? This was a question a British friend had asked me a few years ago, probably based upon the assumption that much of the world has about Americans, which is that the majority of Americans do not have passports. I had no idea what the answer was, so I decided to do a little research, and the answer is somewhat surprising.
The quick answer is that yes, the majority of Americans do not have a passport. The percentage of Americans who have a valid passport, according to the most recent statistics as tabulated by the State Department, is about 46%. This number excludes passport cards, which are identification cards that only allow sea and overland entry to the U.S. from Canada, Mexico and certain parts of the Caribbean, but not the rest of the world.
To get this number I took the number of outstanding valid passports in circulation as estimated by the State Department — the number is 138,675,021 — and divided…
Categories: The Expeditioner