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One of the things I’ve often heard while living in the European Union is the meme that only 10% of Americans own a passport. This assertion is usually followed by the quazi-urban legend that George W. Bush never had a passport before becoming president. This I’ve never been able to prove or disprove any satisfaction Which, it turns out, is not true.
Such a low number wouldn’t have surprised me. After all, the United States is nearly thrice the size of the EU and borders only two foreigncountries, while the EU is made of 27 countries and -- depending on how you want to count them -- borders another 19.
I wondered aloud about this in my previous post, ‘Work in Progress: The United States Explained’ and a commenter, Alison, was nice enough to bring this data set about passports from the ever-awesome data.gov to my attention.
The data was only for the past four years, so I had to do some estimates based on issue rates and the 2000 census numbers, but the result is the above infographic and the table below:
State
Population with Passport
NEW JERSEY
68.36%
ALASKA
65.01%
MASSACHUSETTS
63.42%
NEW YORK
62.47%
CALIFORNIA
60.19%
NEW HAMPSHIRE
59.39%
CONNECTICUT
58.50%
WASHINGTON
57.28%
VERMONT
56.32%
MARYLAND
56.21%
MINNESOTA
56.14%
COLORADO
54.88%
RHODE ISLAND
54.40%
FLORIDA
52.83%
ILLINOIS
52.06%
MAINE
51.62%
ARIZONA
51.24%
HAWAII
49.94%
UTAH
49.36%
VIRGINIA
49.16%
TEXAS
48.80%
NORTH DAKOTA
48.30%
NEVADA
46.84%
MONTANA
46.63%
PENNSYLVANIA
45.11%
DELAWARE
44.93%
WISCONSIN
43.70%
OREGON
43.39%
MICHIGAN
42.89%
WYOMING
41.40%
IDAHO
41.24%
IOWA
39.34%
NEBRASKA
38.97%
GEORGIA
38.73%
KANSAS
38.18%
SOUTH DAKOTA
37.69%
NEW MEXICO
37.11%
OHIO
35.71%
MISSOURI
35.32%
NORTH CAROLINA
34.18%
OKLAHOMA
33.23%
INDIANA
32.73%
SOUTH CAROLINA
32.09%
LOUISIANA
29.47%
TENNESSEE
28.78%
ARKANSAS
25.14%
ALABAMA
25.03%
KENTUCKY
24.94%
WEST VIRGINIA
20.43%
MISSISSIPPI
19.86%
(If you’re the kind of person who really cares about the details, you can see all the calculations on my United States data spreadsheet please let me know if there are any errors)