How Many Americans Live Abroad? The State Department’s 9 Million Figure Is Quietly Going Away
For more than a decade, one number has answered the question of how many Americans live abroad: 9 million. It has been the cornerstone of tax policy debates, congressional testimony, and thousands of news reports. Greenback has cited it, as has nearly every organization, journalist, and researcher reporting on expats.
That number is now being retired. In quiet communications with advocacy groups and statements for the congressional record, the U.S. State Department has acknowledged it will no longer stand behind the figure.
Nobody Actually Knows How Many Americans Live Abroad
- The long-cited estimate was 9 million, attributed to a 2016 State Department calculation.
- The State Department has stopped standing behind that figure, citing the absence of authoritative source data.
- Independent estimates cluster between 4 and 5.5 million, roughly half the long-cited number.
- The U.S. government does not count its citizens abroad, and the Census Bureau excludes them from the decennial count.
The Quiet Pivot
The shift was not announced with a press release. It has surfaced instead through direct acknowledgments to the two largest advocacy organizations representing Americans overseas.
The Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO) has the most detailed record. According to AARO, the Managing Director of the State Department’s Overseas Citizens Services office sent a written statement on July 11, 2024, that included this:
“U.S. citizens are not required to register their presence abroad, and we do not maintain comprehensive lists of U.S. citizens residing overseas. Estimates of U.S. citizens in particular countries can vary and are constantly changing. We do not want to publish figures that cannot be considered authoritative.”
American Citizens Abroad (ACA) received a similar message. In a statement for the record submitted to the House Ways and Means Committee in March 2026 — following the committee’s full hearing with the IRS Chief Executive Officer — ACA disclosed that the State Department told them it “will no longer be publishing this figure, citing the difficulty in accessing robust data to make these estimates.”
The State Department has not issued a public announcement, and the claim is sourced to written correspondence with two independent advocacy organizations, one of which has disclosed the sender’s role and the date of the email in a publicly verifiable form.
The figure itself, meanwhile, is still sitting on travel.state.gov. The Bureau of Consular Affairs’ “Consular Affairs by the Numbers” infographic still states, in bold: “An estimated 9 million U.S. citizens live overseas.” That document is dated January 2020 and has not been updated or taken down.
A Divide in the Data
The 9 million figure traces back to a 2016 State Department calculation, up from a 1999 estimate in the 3-to-6 million range. The methodology behind the 2016 number was never published.
Other federal agencies and independent researchers have long pointed to a much smaller community:
| Source | Estimate | Year | Includes military? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Federal Voting Assistance Program (DoD) | 4.4 million | 2022 | No |
| ACA / District Economics Group | ~4 million civilian + ~1 million military | 2022 | Separate |
| AARO (via Pinto methodology) | 5.5 million | 2023 | No |
| State Department (retired) | 9 million | 2016 | Unclear |
The Federal Voting Assistance Program — part of the Department of Defense, which actually has to locate overseas citizens to administer absentee voting — has been the most methodologically rigorous of these sources. FVAP uses a blend of host-country census data, U.S. tax records, and Social Security data. FVAP has also noted that State Department estimates were inflated for emergency preparedness purposes, not demographic accuracy. For evacuation logistics, overcounting is the safer error. For tax policy, it is not.
ACA’s research, conducted with the District Economics Group, derives its estimate from economic modeling of foreign residency and tax return data. AARO’s 5.5 million figure comes from a separate analysis by independent researcher Heitor David Pinto that starts from United Nations migration data and country-level census records, detailed in full on AARO’s site.
When three independent methodologies land between 4 and 5.5 million and one outlier government estimate sits at 9 million, the outlier is the one worth questioning.
Why the U.S. doesn’t actually count its citizens abroad
Three structural reasons explain why the number has been contested for so long:
- No registration requirement. U.S. citizens are not required to inform the government when they move overseas. Embassy enrollment (the STEP program) is voluntary and short-term oriented. The Census excludes them. After a 2004 pilot study concluded that including overseas Americans in the decennial census would be prohibitively expensive and produce unreliable data, the Census Bureau stopped trying. Foreign data isn’t reliably accessible. Some nations track U.S. citizens living within their borders; many don’t. Those that do often count people born in the U.S. rather than U.S. citizens — a distinction that misses dual nationals and “accidental Americans.”
Because of this, every estimate rests on modeling and proxies rather than on anything resembling a direct count.
The Policy Stakes
This is more than a demographic footnote. The size of the overseas community is the denominator for how Congress legislates about Americans abroad.
The Revenue Question
Representative Darin LaHood’s Residence-Based Taxation for Americans Abroad Act, introduced as H.R. 10468 in December 2024 and expected to be reintroduced in the 119th Congress, would let qualifying U.S. citizens abroad elect to be taxed only on their U.S.-source income. Whether the bill scores as revenue-neutral depends directly on population size. ACA Global Foundation Chairman Charles Bruce said in September 2025: “The revenue estimates — the numbers — are critical. They are the ‘coin of the realm’ when it comes to crafting detailed provisions.”
Concerns About Tax Evasion
High population estimates combined with lower filing numbers have fueled a persistent image of widespread non-compliance among Americans abroad. ACA, in its March 2026 statement to Ways and Means, argued that the inflated figure has “cemented the false optic that U.S. citizens overseas are tax evaders.” If the actual population is roughly half the long-cited number, the perceived compliance gap largely disappears.
Resource Allocation
Accurate population data matters for what the IRS builds and budgets for. International helplines, IBAN-compatible payment systems, and the tax preparer competency standards the Americans abroad community has been asking for all depend on Congress and the IRS understanding the real size and profile of the population they serve.
Want more context on how U.S. expat tax policy is changing? Read our explainer on the LaHood residence-based taxation bill, or browse our full expat news archive for updates on FATCA, FBAR, and Congressional reform efforts.
The Bottom Line
For individual expats, nothing changes about filing obligations. U.S. citizens abroad still owe a U.S. tax return on worldwide income, still need to file an FBAR if foreign accounts exceed $10,000 in aggregate, and still need to account for FATCA reporting and the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion.
What is changing is the public vocabulary. Expect advocacy groups, researchers, and news outlets to move from “9 million Americans abroad” to “an estimated 4 to 5 million” over the coming months. Greenback is updating its own language accordingly. A number we and many others have cited for years was never as solid as it sounded.
The more important question is what Congress does with a more accurate count in front of it. The case for residence-based taxation, for FATCA reform, and for better IRS support of overseas filers looks different when the community being legislated for is closer in size to metro Atlanta than to New York City.
Not sure if you’re filing correctly from abroad?
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