Originally Posted by
3wheels
How do you work that out when only 36% of Americans hold a passport compared with 70% of British citizens?
British citizens need a passport to cross the English Channel, which is hardly indicative of a propensity for worldwide exposure. This also leads British citizens to hold passports whether they use them or not. Similar short trips by Americans to neighboring countries require one of several types of travel document, not all of which count as a passport in the statistics you mention. Until recently a drivers license was all that was required. Americans who hold a passport tend to use theirs to make more significant trips. And of course you don’t need a passport to experience US cultures such as for example Native American/Eskimo, Puerto Rican, Guamanian or Hawaiian cultures... should life take you to those places.
Many Americans are immigrants, who came to the US from elsewhere and now don’t leave.
Many US citizens travel or have travelled in the military, which does not require a passport that counts in the statistics you mention.