  In this Letter, I distinguish "passive" inner rings as those with no current
star formation, as distinct from "active" inner rings that have undergone
recent star formation. I built a sample of nearby galaxies with inner rings
observed in the near- and mid-infrared from the NIRS0S and the S4G surveys. I
used archival far-ultraviolet (FUV) and H\alpha\ imaging of 319 galaxies to
diagnose whether their inner rings are passive or active. I found that passive
rings are found only in early-type disc galaxies (-3<=T<=2). In this range of
stages, 21+-3% and 28+-5% of the rings are passive according to the FUV and
H\alpha\ indicators, respectively. A ring that is passive according to the FUV
is always passive according to H\alpha, but the reverse is not always true.
Ring-lenses form 30-40% of passive rings, which is four times more than the
fraction of ring-lenses found in active rings in the stage range -3<=T<=2. This
is consistent with both a resonance and a manifold origin for the rings because
both models predict purely stellar rings to be wider than their star-forming
counterparts. In the case of resonance rings, the widening may be at least
partly due to the dissolution of rings. If most inner rings have a resonance
origin, I estimate 200Myr to be a lower bound for their dissolution time-scale.
This time-scale is of the order of one orbital period at the radius of inner
rings.
