We looked into this fact and — it’s only partially true. The fact is — we really do spend more on Halloween outfits each year than the sum total that we spend on unreached people. It’s partially true because the original fact is that we spend more on Halloween outfits for our PETs than everything we spend on unreached peoples! (If we were to factor in everything we spend on Halloween in general, wow. Just imagine.) The original fact is here…
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Saving-Money/2015/1014/Americans-will-spend-350-million-on-Halloween-costumes.-For-their-pets
Read it and weep. The original stats on spending for unreached people groups come from the World Christian Database at…
http://www.worldchristiandatabase.org/wcd/https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Saving-Money/2015/1014/Americans-will-spend-350-million-on-Halloween-costumes.-For-their-pets
Some updated 2017 estimates on Halloween spending.
https://nrf.com/resources/consumer-research-and-data/holiday-spending/halloween-headquarters
$3.4 billion on costumes in general
16% will buy costumes for pets
Weep indeed.
Update:
Corrected link for how much we spend on frontier missions is at – http://www.gordonconwell.edu/ockenga/research/documents/StatusofGlobalChristianity2017.pdf
$53 billion on foreign missions
Est. 0.1% on World A, the unevangelized world = $53 million (no one really has a good estimate)
The $350 million we spend on halloween costumes for pets is 6x higher.
Even if we spend 1% of foreign mission money (530 million) on World A (I rather doubt that), Halloween costumes would be nearly 50% the same amount.