What percentage of adult US citizens has never had a passport? (or has never flown?)
 

A coupld of quick questions...

What percentage of adult US citizens has never had a US passport? (never had one, even when he/she was a child)

What percentage of adult US citizens has never flown on any aircraft?(private, commercial, or otherwise)

Where can I get that kind of information?

Thanks!

If you find out..
 

Sarah,
If you find out, please let me know. However, I do not believe that information is even tracked by the US. In the mean time, check out this:
http://www.worldhum.com/weblog/item/...month_39050822
Good luck and let me know!
James

Very hard to know how many Americans have never had a passport; the percentage that currently do is put, variously, at anywhere from 17 to 25 percent. That Worldhum link above plays the guessing game down the middle. We are not a well-traveled people, exactly. :(

My wife, whom is 24 years old, has never flown and we are going to Okinawa Japan in May. This will be her first flight ever. She just got her passport recently as well.

I'm sure she'll love it. :)

About a quarter people having passports sounds about right. Most of the people I know don't leave the country and don't care to. I do however think it's unfair to give a :mad: to such people. Going from state to state here is analogous to going from country to country in europe or asia in terms of distance.
I have no idea, other than some yahooing/ googling to find exact figures however.

As an American you currently don't need a passport to travel a massive area of territory. Of course this is changing soon. You can currently travel all of the US, Canada, Mexico, much of the Caribbean and many islands in the Pacific. This is equal in area to all of Europe and North Africa. In Europe as chuckd pointed out our states are equal in size to many countries. A while back I was talking to a girl from Uzbekistan and she was amazed that we didn't need an identity card to travel from state to state.

I actually had a Danish guy tell me that it was reasonable that Americans only speak English. If you live in Indiana and needed a different language to speak to people in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Kentucky you would learn them or you would learn a common language. If you live in Germany and want to visit your neighbors you can learn French, Dutch, Danish, Flemmish, Polish and Czech or you can learn English.

I have been to about 50-60 countries and have found that if you speak English and carry US Dollars you can find someone who will speak your language and take your money. If you speak Polish and carry zlotys you will have a far more difficult time. I know it really irked the Brits I traveled with that they had to convert to $ for traveling in Africa.

Personally I think the concept of 75 million Americans set loose on the world is a pretty scary concept.

As a former reference librarian, I can tell you that finding answers to these types of questions can be difficult, because many such statistics just aren't kept, or are compiled with the intent of selling this information, so it is not freely available.

The US Dept of State does provide statistics for numbers of passports issued per year:

http://www.travel.state.gov/passport...stats_890.html

Now what really irks the Brits is the way Americans spell words like travelling. :) As for carrying USD, the days of large white fivers (£5) or even money belts full of gold sovereigns are indeed long past. All the same, in those days we did give the world the G&T, so some good came of it. ;)

As for travelling in Africa, in the CFA franc countries, French Francs used to be perfect, at FF1 = CFA100. Even now, Euros say far more for you there than USD ever could. (Most bars & restaurants will accept EUR at 650:1 in these countries.)

I have two kids who have never owned a passport*. They're both Americans. I work with a guy who's never had a passport, and he's American, too.

So that's three right there.

Any others?


*This should be changing this year.

Everybody I work with has to make occasional trips to Europe, so we all have passports. But I guess that's kind of unusual.

Ed

Here's a website that attempts to answer at least part of your question:

http://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2...ny_america.php

I hadn't really thought about spelling traveling and travelling. I typed it into Word and it autocorrected it for me getting rid of the extra l. We also ship boat loads of the letter u over so you can spell colour and flavour. We don't need them here.

One oddity I did find about mixing my own G&T is that in India you have to go to the pharmacy to get the tonic. Since it has quanine it is still considered medicinal.

The group I was traveling with was in 2001 so it was back in the pre-Euro days. I think the US$ is still the most universal travel currency, but the Euro is certainly making inroads.

American children are taught in school that final, single consonants are doubled only when the last syllable is stressed. Otherwise, the suffixes "-ed", "-er" or "-ing" leave the consonant single. Many also are taught that it is unfortunate the British don't have such a sensible, consistent rule for spelling.

All of us at FT should hope there's no turbulence on this flight otherwise SirDomino might be sleeping on the couch or in the garage for a few years... :-)

It's going to be about 24-25%. Add up the number of passports issued for the past 10 years (~73m), then divide it by the number of people in the US (~295m). It's an imprecise number because there are a lot of variables not being accounted for, but probably the best guide you can get. Most likely, the amount of the population that cannot get a passport (non-citizens) will more than offset the number of passports issued that were reissued in less than 10 years (kids, lost docs, fastidious people, etc.). So my guess is that the number is higher, maybe about 28-30%