I came across an astonishing statistic recently. According to Nikkei Asia, at the end of 2024, just 17.5% of Japanese nationals held passports. (You can read the whole story here.)
For frequent international fliers like me (as well as many of you, no doubt), it is hard to imagine there are so few people in Japan with a current passport. The Nikkei Asia story points out that Japan has one of the strongest passports in the world, meaning Japanese passport holders rank among the top destinations open to visit without a visa.
Perhaps you are thinking this number is a lagging holdover from the Covid pandemic lockdowns — after all, Japan didn’t reopen its borders to international travelers until 2023. (More information can be found at this Japan National Tourism Organization link.) Nikkei Asia reports the peak Japanese passport ownership at 24% in 2013 and has been falling ever since.
Compare this to the United States, where nearly half (48%) of the population of about 342 million people hold US passports, according to USAfacts.org.
I was born in Canada but I have lived and worked in the US for many years. I was interested to learn that about 67% of the Canadian population hold Canadian passports (including me), according to the government of Canada’s latest statistics.
Compare that to China, where (according to a 2023 story in the Straits Times) the number of Chinese citizens with Chinese passports was 10%.
The United Kingdom has us all beat, with about 77% of the 66 million-person population holding UK passports as of 2019. Of course, that 77% figure is according to Wikipedia. The story gets more complicated if you start to look deeper. According to the UK 2021 Census, there were a lot of people living in the United Kingdom with more than one passport.
I love digging into the data but I also understand these numbers may not entirely reflect the full truth. For example, some countries, like the UK, allow people to hold multiple passports and some regions allow for travel using other documents other than passports. For example, an American citizen doesn’t need a passport to travel to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and Caribbean countries — as long as they go by land or sea, according to USAFacts.org. US citizens getting on a plane to any of those destinations need to have a passport.
And some countries don’t publish this information at all.
Here is a rough overview of my findings about passport holders around the world:
United Kingdom
77% (apx population 68M, World Bank)
(as of 2019, Wikipedia)
Canada
67% (apx population 33.1M, Statistics Canada)
(As of 2022, Wikipedia)
Taiwan
60% (apx population 23.5M, Taiwan.gov.tw)
(According to Nikkei Asia, citing statistics from the Japan Association of Travel Agents)
Australia
55% (apx population 28m, Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian governments department of Foreign Affairs and Trade)
New Zealand
70% (apx population 5.3 million, according to Wikipedia)
United States
48% (apx population 342M, US Census’ world population clock)
(as of 2023, USAfacts.org)
South Korea
40% (apx population 51M, World Health Organization)
(According to Nikkei Asia, citing statistics from the Japan Association of Travel Agents)
Japan
17.5% (apx population 122.7M, U.S. Census’ world population clock)
(According to Nikkei Asia, citing statistics from the Japan Association of Travel Agents)
China
10% (apx population 1.4B, US Census’ world population clock)
(as of 2016, according to en.wikipedia.org)
-Andrew Olah
