Summary

By unifying information across four studies, NISMART–2 provides, for the first time, annual estimates of the number of missing children. In 1999, an estimated 1,315,600 children met the criteria for being classified as caretaker missing, i.e., their caretakers did not know their whereabouts and were alarmed for at least 1 hour while trying to locate them. Among these missing children, an estimated 797,500 met the additional criterion for being classified as reported missing, i.e., the caretaker contacted the police or a missing children’s agency to help locate the child.

Only a fraction of 1 percent of the children who were reported missing had not been recovered by the time they entered the NISMART–2 study data. Thus, the study shows that, although the number of caretaker missing children is fairly large and a majority come to the attention of law enforcement or missing children’s agencies, all but a very small percentage are recovered fairly quickly.

Most of the caretaker missing children became missing because they ran away (48 percent) or because of benign misunderstandings about where they should be (28 percent). Together, these two reasons accounted for 84 percent of all children who were reported missing. (This estimated combined percentage was carefully developed to count each child only once. Because some children had more than one type of episode, the estimates in table 3 should not be summed.) This is consistent with the fact that about three-fourths of those who were caretaker missing (or reported missing) were young adolescents and teenagers (age 12 and older), an age group with more independent comings and goings than younger children and more conflicts with parents and other caretakers. No significant gender differences were found, but white children were at significantly lower risk of becoming missing.

Contrary to the common assumption that abduction is a principal reason why children become missing, the NISMART–2 findings indicate that only a small minority of missing children were abducted, and most of these children were abducted by family members (9 percent of all caretaker missing children). Close to 3 percent of caretaker missing children were abducted by a nonfamily perpetrator; among these, an extremely small number (90) were victims of stereotypical kidnapping.