A Human Capital Methodology for Estimating the Lifelong Personal Costs of Young Women Leaving the Sex Trade

Abstract

This article combines case study interviews with the tools of economic cost-benefit analysis to estimate the lifelong effects for individuals in Manitoba, Canada, who began engaging in prostitution as youths. The empirical findings reveal that sex workers retain only a small portion of their earnings from prostitution after feeding drug addictions and third-parties extortions of net residual earnings. The sex-trade worker typically suffers from debilitating addictions and health conditions that are symptomatic of the stress and danger of engaging in this lifestyle. After leaving prostitution, the former sex worker faces major challenges in rejoining the mainstream labor market. The issues engender multiple reasons for policy-makers to direct their attention to counteracting the conditions of vulnerability that bring youth into this lifestyle and, thereby, effectively disrupting the supply of sex workers.Youth sex trade, Aboriginal women, cost-benefit methodology, women's health and addictions, earnings differentials, human capital, JEL Codes: I12; J15; J24,

Running a gauntlet: A review of victimization and violence in the pre-entry, post-entry, and peri-/post-exit periods of commercial sexual exploitation.

“…As described, commercially sexually exploited girls and women typically undergo a staggering range of traumatic experiences, many of them chronic, some spanning formative developmental periods, both prior to entry and while in the industry. Not surprisingly these experiences and their consequences can have deleterious effects on efforts to leave the sex industry and adjust to life thereafter (Dalla, 2006; DeRiviere, 2006; Farley et al, 2003; Tsutsumi et al, 2008; Zimmerman et al, 2008). Månsson and Hedin (1999) have identified four major difficulties faced by victims after they have exited the sex trade: challenges in working through the experiences of having been in the sex trade; dealing with the shame associated with sex trade; living in a marginal situation with feelings of not belonging; and, dealing with intimate and close relationships.…”

Prostitutes, Pimps, and Brothels: Intermediaries, Information, and Market Structure in Prostitution Markets

“…The debate within the sociology, economics, and feminist literature as to whether prostitution is prima facie exploitative is not addressed in this article (see and for a discussion). Similarly, the important related topics of human trafficking and child prostitution are not addressed, and the model developed herein is explicitly inappropriate for consideration of these topics (see for extensive review of trafficking issues).…”

“…Though some general economic analysis of prostitution can be found in and studies of the Asian context, the volume of work from the broader social sciences is more extensive than in economics per se (see ). The feminist economics literature provides a nice bridge between economics and the broader social science frameworks (e.g., ). The focus in much of the economics literature per se has, not surprisingly, been on price determination, information, and signaling .…”

“…In our opinion, there is little convincing empirical evidence regarding the effect of intermediaries on the allocation of surplus or the dissemination of information in this market. presents interview data that indicate that agents extract a large share of earnings (37%). However, this statistic must be viewed with considerable caution, since the payments to “dependent partners” are aggregated with those to intermediaries, and these sex‐trade workers are principally young, marginalized aboriginal women in an idiosyncratic setting (Winnipeg, Canada) and are subject to acknowledged selection biases.…”

A benefit-cost framework for early intervention to prevent sex trading

“…This is not correct, however, when the time profiles of harms depend on trajectories in complicated ways. 29 Most information about sex trading trajectories comes from retrospective data collected from adult women about their experiences as adolescents (Dalla, 2006;DeRiviere, 2006;Martin, Hearst, & Widom, 2010;Wilson & Widom, 2010). The existing literature suggests great variability in trajectories.…”