

From 3% to 38%, America Has Seen a Staggering Growth in Passport Holders - alexcasalboni
http://dadaviz.com/i/3323

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cafard
I can understand the growth--citizens of the US could travel into Canada with
minimal identification in the old days. And I can understand it not being
higher. The US is a very big place, with much to see for one thing. And some
of the habits formed in the days of cheap gasoline and expensive airfares
persist among people who could fly abroad for cost of a long road trip. (Well,
the airlines have the whip hand again on pricing, but still...)

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radicality
Anyone else find it crazy that it's still _only_ 38%? Just for interest, I
looked up the stats for the UK, and this [1] article from 2009 gives the
figure of 80%.

[1]
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3127696.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3127696.stm)

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philwelch
The entire UK is the size of a small US state. You can literally just get
drunk, black out, and wake up in a different country. (Citation:
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2509837/Teenager-
wen...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2509837/Teenager-went-drunken-
night-Oldham-woke-PARIS.html)) In the US, you could travel the equivalent
distance of London to Serbia and still not leave the country. That has a huge
impact on passport statistics.

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jdietrich
That argument falls apart if you look at European countries within the
Schengen area. The US is less populous and less diverse than the Schengen free
travel area, but most EU countries have drastically higher rates of passport
ownership than the US. The immense opportunities for passport-free travel do
not seem to deter Europeans from getting a passport.

I think the fundamental explanation for the disparity is that Americans are
starved of vacation time, so find it much less appealing to travel
internationally. The EU minimum of four weeks paid vacation is exceptionally
generous by US standards; In many EU countries the average worker receives
five or six weeks of paid vacation, which is almost unheard of in the US.

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philwelch
The U.S. is also larger than the Schengen area. Plus, air travel from Europe
is considerably cheaper than air travel from the United States, while gasoline
is much cheaper in the United States.

Besides, we were comparing to the UK, which is not part of the Schengen area
but is right next to it. Of course Britons are going to have passports.

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cguess
While interesting... is there no commentary or discussion about the causation?
Thanks for posting the graph, but I'd be very curious why people think this
has happened.

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IvyMike
My theory: during the cold war, there was "America is the best" propaganda
which even though it was really anti-Soviet, ended up discouraging people from
travelling _anywhere_. Berlin wall fell in 1989, the cold war propaganda
tapered off, and travel to foreign countries slowly ramped up.

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IvyMike
May I ask why the downvote? My speculation may or may not be correct, but
despite @brandonmenc's objection, I still think it's a possible factor. It
certainly matches the attitudes of my relatives and other adults when I was a
child growing up in the 80's. It's also more closely tied to the start of the
trend line than some of the other theories in this thread, and was posted as a
good faith response to @cguess.

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gizmo686
Interesting, that growth pattern looks linear.

