Originally Posted by cordelli

Not to burst anybody's bubble, but the title to the thread is very midleading.

In 1989 they issued 3.69 million passports. That is not the number of people with passports, that's how many were issued in that year. To estimate the number of people with passports you need to add up that year plus the previous nine years (assuming most people have a 10 year passport),

1989 - 3,690,830
1988 - 4,060,803
1987 - 4,872,403
1986 - 4,109,132
1985 - 4,967,895
1984 - 4,718,205
1983 - 4,121,534
1982 - 3,763,995
1981 - 3,222,346
1980 - 3,020,468

or 40,547,611 valid passports. That's a bit more than 7 million.

The thread title is comparing the number of passports issued in one year (1989) with the number of valid passports last year which would include passports issued in the previous 4 or 9 years depending on the holders age. In 2010, the state department issued 13,883,129 passports (including 1,596,485 passport cards)