Mom heard a statistic cited yesterday which I thought I could verify easily. The question was “how many Americans have passports,” and the answer she heard was 44%. I went off to the Census Bureau’s site to see if I could find it, and was completely unsuccessful. I eventually wound up at the State Department’s site, where I found a page of stats showing me the number of passports issued per year, but that doesn’t answer the question. Obviously the number issued doesn’t take into account the number expired in each year, and the stats don’t break out renewals.* I’ve found conflicting numbers all over the place, from a low of 11% to that 44% number cited above. So I thought I’d do an entirely unscientific poll of you folks. Who has a valid passport?
My passport, by the way, is no longer valid. I paid the $10 fee (it’s now $55) in 1984 and used it to go to Europe that year and again in 1987, but it expired in 1994 and I’ve had no need for it since. How about you?
*Interestingly, State’s stats show a sudden dropoff in passports issued in 1989, followed by a steady decline until 1993, when they jumped by a full one million. I wonder what that means?
I got a passport in 1987, in the hopes of traveling to the UK for a year of college (turned out to be waaaay too expensive. Darnit), and then it expired before I ever used it. I got it renewed in 2001, and flew to the UK just about 6 weeks after 9/11. I plan to use it to go to Germany, too, in the next year or so.
I got my first one when I was eight or nine, and I’ve only had about three cumulative years of lapsed-passport-hood since then, which I am mortified to realize includes the present time — mine just expired in July. I need to take care of that soon, because you never know when the opportunity to wing off to Rio for the weekend will present itself, right?!
Never had one!
I have a valid passport, Linkster. Got my first in 1982 or so when I had the last-minute opportunity to spend a summer on a kibbutz in Israel. It had expired, however, by the time I had a chance to leave the country again (well, I regularly went to Canada but a passport isn’t needed for that). So I got a new one in 1997, as I recall, for a trip to the U.K. It’s still valid and I’ve gone to a few other places since then. I vow, before you and G-d and all of these witnesses that I will never, ever, ever let it expire again.
What was the question again?
Mine expired sometime in the early 80’s, I suppose. Interestingly, I have never gotten a passport in the U.S., but I must say that the service is, or at least was, much better overseas. I was in Munich when I got my first passport and there is a long story behind it. Luckily I was travelling with a birth certificate and I got my passport from the American consulate in less than 24 hours. That passport expired during another trip, this time to Spain, and I got it renewed at the consulate in Seville in just a couple of days, but I currently don’t have a passport and, unless I win a lottery, I don’t forsee needing one!
I think the 11% figure is probably more accurate!
I’m on my third passport. Don’t have the first one, which I got before a trip to Europe in 1978. At that time, I think they lasted only about 5 years, since my second is dated Feb 15, 1984. It contains a French entry stamp from 1984, British entry and exit stamps from 1993, and US entry stamps for both of those trips.
That passport had expired when I got an opportunity to travel to Greece in late 1995. My current one, with Greek entry and exit stamps but no indication that I returned to the US, is dated Sep 22, 1995, so it’s valid for nearly two more years.
If I remember correctly, the dollar was weak against just about everything from 1990 to 1993-ish, so overseas tourism would have dropped.
I have a valid passport, although it hasn’t been used since a trip to the Netherlands shortly after 9/11. Everyone there wanted to know if I thought the US was going to bomb Afghanistan. (“Hell, yes.”)
sigh! sadly, the moose has never had the need to have a passport . . . now, my daughters – they have BOTH been to Europe while they were still in high school, Lessa has been twice!!! But, the mama, no . . .
>..
I have a valid passport and carry it in my purse at all times..
My sister said I am the only one she knows who carries a passport and a pair of peds…
Hey, you never know when you will fly off to Paris to try on a pair of shoes…!
Got my first one in 1999 for our honeymoon; have used it as identification for flying, since we don’t have driver’s licenses (let them lapse in 94-95, finally getting mine again the day before Thanksgiving…).
I posted the link to your entry on an email list I’m connected with, and one of the posters there made reference to a blog thread from January. About a quarter of the way down the page is another reference to a source arguing that 18 percent of Americans have passports.
N, I recognize that thread. That’s where I got the 11% number, in fact. Thanks. 😉
My wife and I both have passports. She’s had one continuously since high school, I had one as a kid which lapsed in 1989 and was renewed in 1998.
i got my first (and only, so far) passport for a trip to Great Britain in 1996. it would be nice to go back before it expires.