$64k question not a $32,565,881 one

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) is a federally funded 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that works in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. In the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2005 NCMEC's received $32,565,881 to support their mission which "...is to help prevent child abduction and sexual exploitation; help find missing children; and assist victims of child abduction and sexual exploitation, their families, and the professionals who serve them...".

According to their site information, since its establishment in 1984, NCMEC has assisted law enforcement with more than 117,100 missing child cases, resulting in the recovery of more than 99,500 children.

Their 2005 Annual Report indicates, "...NCMEC has played a key role in raising our nation’s recovery rate of missing children from 62 percent in 1990 to more than 96 percent today..."

Here is what I don't understand



However, the questions that I have are:

1) What happened to all the other children? They were established in 1984. If @880k children go missing that are reported each year (an estimated 500,000 more are not reported) wouldn’t that mean 17,600,000 give or take a few million have gone missing since 1984. They have recovered 99,500 children which is certainly admirable.

2) What is the recovery success ratio of 96% based on? Is it only based on non family abductions or do they include those classified as throwaways, runaways, family abductions, voluntarily missing, lost or injured?

3) What is the actual number of children recovered and what was the criteria used to classify them?