Over 100 million passports are registered to U.S. citizens. The travel rewards management website MileCards recently crunched the numbers to discover people who live in New Jersey are the most likely to hold a passport. At 54%, more than half the state's residents have one, which blows past the national average of 37%.
New York, Massachusetts, Alaska, and Connecticut round out the top five states for passport holders.
MileCards suggests northeastern residents are more likely to have passports because of their proximity to Canada and Europe, and the Caribbean, which is a popular destination during harsh winters. Major airports are also within easy distance to people across those states, a further inducement to international travel.
The states with the fewest passport holders include Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Mississippi, where only 15% of the population is registered for passports.
MileCards made its calculations based on dividing the State Department's annual passport statistics by the 2013 U.S. Census population estimates.
