Estimates the incidence of 5 categories of children, those who were: abducted by family members; abducted by non-family members; runaways; thrownaways; and missing because they had gotten lost or injured, or for some other reason. Data was collected from 6 separate sources: household survey; juvenile facilities survey; returned runaway study; police records study; FBI data reanalysis; and community professionals study. Charts, tables and graphs.

This Bulletin provides information on the numbers and characteristics of two groups of children not frequently recognized in the literature on missing children: those involuntarily missing because they were lost, injured, or stranded and those missing for benign reasons. The estimates reported in this Bulletin are derived from two components of the Second National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children (NISMART-2): the National Household Survey of Adult Caretakers and the National Household Survey of Youth. These surveys were conducted during 1999 and reflect the experiences of children in the United States over a 12-month period. Because the vast majority of cases were concentrated in 1999, the annual period the Bulletin refers to is 1999.