U.S. Passport Holders By State (MAP)

Blogger C.G.P. Grey put together a map of the United States listing passport holders per capita by state.

States on, or close to the coasts tend to hold the most passport carrying citizens, as the states with over 60% of the population holding passports are California, New York, New Jersey (the winner with 68.36%), Massachusetts and Delaware.

It should come as no surprise that one of those Jersey passport holders is Sanjeev Midha, the title holder of America's largest passport at 96 pages.

The state with the least passport holders? Mississippi. Less than 20% of Mississippi's population has passports (19.86% to be exact). Via blog.cgpgrey.com/

Where does your state fit in? Do you have a passport? Why do so many New Jersians have passports? So many questions.

Comments

[hardcenter]

10:08 AM on 03/13/2011

Not surprising that the states with the highest percentage of passport holders tend to be the most educated with the best paying and most globalized jobs while those with the lowest percentage tend to be those that are less educated, more insular, and less educated.

[Absolon]

02:40 AM on 03/12/2011

Children with US citizenship should be issued passports along with their social security cards when they are born and it should not cost their parents a dime.

[DannyGee]

12:06 AM on 03/12/2011

don't really know whether to trust this map or not since the only state below 20% is La not MS. I guess those dumb southern states are all the same?

[Tripoli]

10:06 AM on 03/12/2011

According to the map, it is indeed Mississippi.
Louisiana is the one giving the finger to the sea

[jessiependergrass]

12:56 AM on 03/16/2011

It's funny you would say dumb southern states yet you yourself don't know the difference between LA and MS.

[Tripoli]

08:38 PM on 03/11/2011

I grew up without the privilege of having a U.S. passport. You have no idea how hard it is to travel from one place to the other when you come from certain places. This is why I am always surprised when I see Americans who choose not to have a passport or who never traveled beyond these enchanted shores.
Owning a U.S. passport for me was like a ticket to a whole new world. I may not be able to visit all the places I want to visit, but just the fact that I have this beautiful blue document makes me feel like the possibilities are endless.

[prairieaire]

04:14 PM on 03/11/2011

Interesting that the states with the lowest passport rate are also ones that are seen as being the reddest states. Maybe having a passport and travelling makes one more liberal in one's thinking and voting.

[Absolon]

02:37 AM on 03/12/2011

It does. Travel is the ultimate "best" education. Travel in peaceful times oblviates the need for travel in war times.

[hardcenter]

10:08 AM on 03/13/2011

Or maybe being more liberal and more educated makes you more curious about the world outside of your immediate tribe and village...

[david1967]

09:32 AM on 03/11/2011

Im college educated with a good income but simply hate the hassle of travel... as for the shots taken by some at those regions where travel is less frequent just seems mean and ill mannered...If it was broken down by race would such comments have been made?...doubt it

[ArchStanton400]

03:34 PM on 03/10/2011

It also appears each individual State's average Intellegence Quotent scores and percentage of people holding a College Degree or having completed a course in Higher Education Programs are also a major determining factor in US Citizens holding a Passport. Very curious indeed.

[RitaLouise]

10:54 PM on 03/10/2011

You have to be able to read and write to fill out the form.

[Nosybear]

02:15 PM on 03/11/2011

Confounded variables, or aliases, in statistical terms.

[onionboy]

02:39 PM on 03/10/2011

I imagine that Alaska is so high because they all need their passport to drive into Canada to take advantage of government-provide healthcare.

[DannyGee]

12:09 AM on 03/12/2011

I trust this is a joke since its over 500 miles from the largest city in Alaska to the podunk city of Whitehorse BC

[onionboy]

12:47 AM on 03/12/2011

"We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada"
--Sarah Palin
(Speaking in Canada)

Ya' just can't make this stuff up.

[TheExpeditioner]

12:05 PM on 03/10/2011

Matt here from TheExpeditioner.com. I wrote a post about this in January titled How Many Americans Have a Passport? http://www.theexpeditioner.com/2010/02/17/how-many-americans-have-a-passport-2/

According to the 2010 statistics for passports issued, as well as the number of passports issued over the past 10 years, 114,464,041 Americans have a passport. Given a total population of 307,006,550, that means about 37% of the total population has a passport.

[david1967]

09:17 AM on 03/11/2011

dont you have to exclude children under a certain age from that total?

[TheExpeditioner]

09:56 AM on 03/11/2011

Why?

[instarx]

11:39 AM on 03/10/2011

What's so surprising about the passport distribution? High passport states are the wealthiest states while low passport states are the poorest states. Why have a passport when you can't afford to go leave the country for a vacation anyway?

[WILLJLA]

09:06 PM on 03/10/2011

and what color are the rich states?...................Blue! maybe the poor people should vote different but....... No they like being poor I guess, sorry i don't really want them on the plane to Europe with me any way! As you know we are snobs.

[David Rozgonyi]

03:31 AM on 03/11/2011

I laughed so hard I spit out my arugula!

[Nosybear]

02:16 PM on 03/11/2011

Having lived overseas and experienced Americans from those dark blue states abroad, it's a good thing that more don't have passports.

[Byron Mayes]

11:23 AM on 03/10/2011

I strongly recommend reading the original article at
http://blog.cgpgrey.com/how-many-americans-have-a-passport-the-percentages-state-by-state/

The graphic has a different, less distorting title, the writing is superior, and the author provides both explanation of his data sources and a link to his calculations.

Apparently the AOL dumbdown has begun here at HuffPo!

[tyrant510]

03:26 PM on 03/10/2011

the dumbdowned articles have been here long before AOL.

[Stephen Leverett]

11:14 AM on 03/10/2011

Again, Mark Twain (or so I have been told) said it best, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics".
This begs more questions than it answers. How do they know they have a good number of citizens (not illegal aliens like the census)? Are they using census data? Are they using IRS data (against the law to use IRS data but that never stopped politicians). Is the citizen data collected same year as the passport data? Why is any passport data available? Should there not be a protection against the government data being made public (ie person with most pages)?


Sad commentary that we can find out who has the most pages but cannot read a HealthCare bill before it is passed.

[The Notorious PDF]

11:27 AM on 03/10/2011

What's sad is your bogus deflection. Right-wing demands of backwards regression and phony claims to support their made up assertions are why we can't progress or sanely legislate as a nation.

[The Notorious PDF]

11:36 AM on 03/10/2011

We all know the anti-rest-of-the-world, antipathy towards "ferriners", nationalistic attitudes of the right. They spend too much time arguing about who's a "real American" to travel. I don't knock anyone for simply not being able to afford to travel, which I'm sure is the case with a lot of people, or for traveling abroad simply not being their personal thing. But, I will knock the kind of xen0phobic and hostile attitudes that we see on the right, where they think their ignorance is a badge of honor.

[HighDesertBob]

11:03 AM on 03/10/2011

Looking at the map it appears mostly middle America has the lowest percentage of passport owners. This not surprising, most the the people living in these states have no desire to leave the United States or see the rest of the world. They are happy where they are. I suspect if one asked one of the "world travelers" questions about their own country they would have a difficult time answering.
My wife and I have passports mainly because we visit Mexico and Canada regularly. We are pretty content seeing America first and completely as are most of the people in the states with the lowest per capita percentage. Also, many of the poor states represented by the darker colors on the map have a population that can't afford to travel abroad.

[MJinCanada]

11:53 AM on 03/10/2011

What would be very cool would be a followup survey in states with fewer passport holders asking why they don't have a passport (money, no interest in traveling, fear of terrorism) and if they would travel and where they'd visit if they could afford it.

[David6869]

12:16 PM on 03/10/2011

I might disagree with your observation that travelers don't know anything about their own country. I love to travel, anywhere and every where. I find Montana just as compelling as Peru. I find China to be one of the most interesting places I have ever been just because it is so different from my home.
I would agree that many of the folks across much of the middle of the country can not afford to travel. When you get to the middle south the poverty level is quite high.

[HighDesertBob]

12:30 PM on 03/10/2011

My comment wasn't a broad statement about all travelers. But many who travel to other countries have yet to see their own country. And many of these same people can't tell you much about most of the states they haven't visited.
Also, many people don't feel they need a passport. The US isn't like the rest of the world where most of the countries are smaller than some of our states and travel across borders is inevitable. That isn't the case here in America for many people who are born, live and die and never travel further than a few hundred miles from their homes.

[Byron Mayes]

11:02 AM on 03/10/2011

What a horrible article and graphic. The caption says "per capita" but the data is given in percentage, and the article describes the data with the phrase "most passport-carrying citizens" which connotes a discrete figure. Those measures aren't equal or equivalent.

Alaska shows on the map as a state with over 60% of the population carrying passports. But Alaska's population is just over 710,000. Mississippi's population is about 3 million, so 20% is about 600,000. That would equal about 84% of Alaska's population, so if even 75% of Alaskans have passports, Mississippi still wouldn't have "the least [fewest actually] passport holders."

Maybe the originators of the data did a better job of reporting.

[Nosybear]

02:22 PM on 03/11/2011

Uh, passports/populationX100% is the percentage of people holding passports. It's equivalent, quantitatively, to use per capita or percent, as percent would be passports per hundred capitas. For every hundred capitas in Alaska, 60 have passports. Line up a hundred Mississippi capitas and you'll find 20 (if your sample is representative of the population). The reason for the reporters using percent is to equalize the denominator. "Most passport-carrying citizens" is an unfortunate phrase, true, and I'd agree with you: Journalists should be more numerate, particularly if they're going to use statistics in the story. Bottom line, nice quibble, worthy of a Republican deficit hawk.

[Marlo Stanfield]

09:54 AM on 03/10/2011

What a shock. The states with the lowest passport holdings are generally the fattest, least educated, and most Republican states.

This coming from a fat, passport-holding, well educated, registered Democrat residing in Louzianna.

[Gregory Marshall]

10:27 AM on 03/10/2011

I posted similar sentiments and for some reason, it looks like it was deleted.

[Scoville Scale]

10:35 AM on 03/10/2011

Lots of that going on lately.

[David6869]

12:17 PM on 03/10/2011

Your observation was mine as well.