Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

Worldwide statistics on those who go missing can be fairly difficult to establish as there are many countries who simply either don’t report the cases or don’t make the information public.

Specifically, most developing countries in places such as Africa, Asia and Latin America don’t seem to be recording these incidents properly. However, with that being said experts have been able estimate that approximately 8 million children go missing each year around the world (1. Trackimo.com, Emily Moore, 27 July 2017). If adults were to be included into the equation, it’s not clear by how much that number would rise. It’s worth pointing out though that far more individuals under the age of 21 seem to go missing than those above 21. In 2019 the United States stated that 161,108 people over the age of 21 went missing while 448,090 under that age went missing. It’s worth pointing out that the vast majority of these incidents are solved in one way or another, but of course, there are occasions where the missing is never found (2. Statista.com, Statista Research Department, 27 February 2020).

Taking United States data into account, the missing over 21 accounted for 26% of the total. Meaning, if the same situation was true for every other country, the estimated number of missing people worldwide per year could be over 10 million. However, official statistics don’t exist for this question, so that number shouldn’t be taken with any degree of confidence or certainty and is missing a whole range of factors. I was also hoping to find official statistics on the number of individuals that go missing every year in a rural setting, but if they exist then I couldn’t find them. Perhaps relevant here though, is that the extremely rural state of Alaska records missing persons at almost twice that of the National average.