The economics of prostitution and marriage

i want to marry someone. i don’t have boyfriends.

r2_jane@yahoo.co.jp

The nice thing about writing about the sex trade is you can make up whatever number you like to support whatever position you wish to assert, and the more ourtrageous the numbers, the more eagerly the press will jump on it. Even better, unlike Ponds and Fleishman, no one will ever check your data! It’s a win/win situation for everyone! :-)

Strange article … I thought the high price was just supply-and-demand?

Thanks for an illuminating post. One real problem in recent feminist writing on the subject is, I think, a refusal to acknowledge complexities - to homogenise sex workers as you describe.

The question that seems to be missed by studies such as these is why when there are jobs available do women choose prostitution? Another annoying habit is not including male prostitution in these studies.

A very well-written and thoughtful decontruction. I have not read the original paper either, but I do hope the ABC report found the juicy bits and quoted them out of context. If the authors really believe that “wives” and “prostitutes” are in competition, then they have no conception of the role played by prostitutes in most cultures. That is, “wives” and sex workers tend to co-exist. You put it best, Vixen when you point out that (many?)men visit prostitutes for a “fantasy vacation”. They are prepared to pay high prices because totally NSA, time-limited, obligation-free and anonymous sex is an extremely rare commodity. And that is all there is to it.

the reason they never use prime examples of sex workers is that they need them to be whores

if they showed it as a respecable option to persue then their entire structure of control through morality would waver as they saw their wives and daughters taking up the trade

it’s amazing what closed minds can belive

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Actually…. I think you completely miss the point of Paulos’ ABC article. Further, the original paper is rather wonderful and though the premises are simplified, and admittedly absurdly so (these are called “stylized facts” in the business), the conclusions stem logically (and mathematically correctly) from the assumptions. If you had read it and understood it, you’d probably be amused and likely in general agreement, and instead of going to the gym angry, actually appreciate Paulos’ article. One must apply the traditional admonition so commonly warranted by articles released without the benefit of an editor: RTFA. If you did your brain wouldn’t be doing that rubber band thing you find so troubling.

First, the Paulos (ABC) article summarizes the original paper accurately while fairly pointing out the (few) unacknowledged flaws in the original article: specifically citing sampling problems with prostitutes that have been busted and failing to consider abusive or problematic marriages which impose costs on the wife not considered by the article, which may be substantive enough to alter the conclusions, or require additional balancing considerations otherwise ignored.

That Paulos is a review of Edlund and Korn makes a review of Paulos an absence of fully understanding the Edlund and Korn article a mere ad hominem attack. If you read the paper, you will find Paulos gives an accurate and reasonable summary and by necessity does not delve into every detail the article presents. Your criticisms of the summary, and more so when applied to the article, are entirely false.

Neither Paulos nor Edlund and Korn make the mistake of assuming all prostitutes fall into the same socio-economic class. The paper considers the simple case where incomes for prostitution are homogeneous and where they are heterogeneous, and likewise makes the same assumptions for male incomes and for women’s incomes, and finally adds to the model “housewives.” The economic distributions they make for the incomes of prostitutes are derived from 13 cited studies (of 58 references) including mid-15th century France, 1934 Japan, 1947-72 Germany, 1973 Nevada, early 1980’s Thailand, 1981 Munich, 1990-91 Los Angeles, 1993 Montreal, mid-1990’s Indonesia, 1995 Barcelona, 1997 German, 1997 Brazil, and late 1990’s Malaysia. The article describes the market structure as:

“At the bottom we find street prostitution, followed by brothels, bars and clubs. Call girls and escort agencies occupy the middle to high slots, and kept women the top rungs.”

Paulos briefly mentions and Edlund and Korn go into some detail regarding the “ugly side.” It would seem that Ray might take issue with the characterization of section 4.4 of the paper, titled “Voluntary?” but the paper certainly address the issue. The conclusion of the authors is that there is no question of victimization: “[i]n times and places where forced labor has been used, prostitution was no exception.” But the authors suggest that “Poor conditions or riskiness are by themselves not sufficient to establish bondage or slavery as the alternative could be worse.” That is, the authors do not support the concept of “economic slavery” as such, acknowledging that “economic realities seem to play into how willingly women are thus victimized,” but this is not slavery - it is a rational choice in confronting a difficult situation. Sex workers are not mindless victims.

The workers written about in both the ABC article and the paper are in no way “recreational sex workers,” indeed that concept is only briefly acknowledged as being largely irrelevant to the economic theory they are deriving. They admit that such dismissal of “recreational sex workers” undermines the validity of the theory to the extant that some women might find economic value in the pleasure of the occupation of being a prostitute, rather it is a common but false assumption that women “abhor sex” (and also the equally problematic assumption that “women were suspected of being overly sexual and willing adulteresses.”)

One of the worst examples of how embarrassing it can be to not RTFA before expounding on a misinterpretation of it is the argument that the authors failed to do their homework on income levels. Aside from the summary of sources used as reference, to support the contention that prostitution as a profession commands some premium over other employment available to women of similar qualifications, the article specifically cites in section 2.3 Pay, the following “For a probability sample of 1,024 female street prostitutes in LA interviewed in 1990 and 1991, the annual average total earnings were USD 23,845 for prostitutes, while working women averaged USD 20,197 and female service workers only USD 17,192.” The article backs this assertion up with data from Montreal, Indonesia, and Malaysia. If one had residual doubt as to the validity of the assumption, one can review the 13 references cited in table 1.

As to the argument that the article is remiss in positing that ex-prostitutes cannot marry, it is not. The entire point of the economic argument is predicated on the assumption specifically spelled out as such by both the article and the ABC review that prostitutes cannot marry and married women are not prostitutes. The degree to which that assumption is valid is specially addressed in 4.5 Wife and prostitute? The authors state, and Ray backs up, that “It is a fair guess that to the extent former prostitutes marry, on average they do so on worse terms than they would have had in the absence of their past.” That is, having been a prostitute is a liability in the marriage market. You might find some men who love it, some who don’t care, but on average it is a liability. That Ray argues that young women may fail to make the calculation they are trading marriage for high income is utterly irrelevant to the economic argument presented, as even a cursory read of the article would reveal.

Ray’s dismissal of the competing commodities argument is also an embarrassing admission of a failure to RTFA. The article does get all Madonna-whore: “The prostitute serves men in a way that would be scandalous if done by a wife. The Madonna ­ Whore dichotomy may have risen from the need to keep the two separate. Consistent with the premise of this paper, the wife was pigeon-holed at the high end of the social spectrum, and the harlot at respectable distance.” The article goes into great detail about the comparative services of the prostitute and wife, how both have value and why, and what it means. The stylized fact is not about the mutually exclusive condition of men, rather the stylized fact is to create a mutually exclusive choice for women. It is merely essential to the premise that the woman choose to be a prostitute or a wife (though footnote 27 admits “The alternative formulation that women choose neither, but are sold into either marriage or prostitution, would also work.”)

As for ignoring homosexual prostitution, the article does not, nor does it ignore Blue’s “renting a stud.” Male stud services are not economically relevant to the model being developed. Again, a quick RTFA will make the reasons clear. Directly addressing homosexual prostitution the authors state: “Females outnumber males as sellers, but that is not the primary reason we do not discuss homosexual prostitution. The premise of this paper is that female heterosexual prostitution is conditioned by the following realities of reproduction: fecund women are scarce; a child has by default only one known parent ­ the mother; and marriage gives a man parental rights to the children borne by his wife.”

The lesson: never, ever launch into a diatribe without at least first reading the article. You might find valid mistakes when you do, and have plenty to argue with, but at least it won’t be so embarrassing.

I have to dissagree with your last bit of deconstruction, specifically: “Wives and prostitutes are competing commodities (in the reductionist view of economists, that is), but wives are distinctly superior in that they can produce children that are socially recognized as coming from the father.”

Yes just yes, To understand why you must understand that in reductionist economics only paid labor has any value. If we assume we are speaking of a housewife we can then assume that her labor involves but is not limited to sex, cooking, cleaning, raising childeren..etc, in essences she has a high value/cost for the husband and her wage is essentially his financial support. As for the prostitute’s value/cost to the man it is much less and (as eluded to earlier in your rebuttal) there are no strings attached and no questions asked, it is simply a service performed for a fee. With a prostitute he does not have to worry about responses such as, “you want me to do what!” or “I can’t believe you asked that!” and other such responses that could have a very negative effect on a marrige or just severe embarrasment.

In essence, I agree with you statment that men seek out wives and prostitutes for different reasons, however that does not change the fact that they are competing commodities in that they both look to perform labor for a profit from a singular source and as such they are in direct competition.

By way of utterly idiosyncratic assumption, I think that the binary social opposition which K&E posit between sex-work and traditional wifery is probably least relevant for recreational sex-work performed in an urban center where individuals can afford to pay $150-300 per hour for a sex workers services. In a locale like that, I would instead posit that sex-work wage premiums are a reaction to the declining earnings curve as a sex-worker ages and (potentially) the “locked-in” nature which a career as a sex-worker creates (assuming that sex-work is a full-time occupation, and that potential employers would be hesitant to accept “Sex Worker” as a prior occupation). Certainly, there is also a wage-risk premium at work based on the potential reputational damage and the potential for criminal prosecution.

Frankly, in environs like New York and LA, I’d imagine that the above explanations are more meaningful in and of themselves rather than the “prostitutes or wives” explanation which K&E posit. Certainly, there is the assumption made by many economists that the strategic advantages of marriage make it the ultimate goal of all men and women - a not unreasonable assumption (but not one I would adopt) - but I read K&E as making a point based specifically on child-legitimacy. I see no real importance attached to legitimacy in modern urban (mostly) Western centers. In other places, times and cultural settings, the maintenance of the patriline can be a major preoccupation. Sex-work located in these places probably is compensated at a premium based on the forfeiture of the capability to be a patriline-acceptable mother. In places, times and cultural settings where kinship is more fluid and less important, I find the other explanations for high sex-worker wages are more persuasive.

And by the way, in an economics paper, nobody gets to be a person, so sex-workers shouldn’t feel singled out…