I figured someone here already knew or knew how to go about finding an estimate of the percentage of women in society who are 'providers' in its various forms: meaning any kind of sex-for-money regardless of class, sophistication or legality.

Would you say it's 5% or 1% or even less than that?

Thanks in advance.

Of the women that participate in sex

100% do it for some sort of gratuity. Whether it is money, gifts or dinner.

SO according to your criteria, it's 100%.

Cute. But I specifically said "sex-for-MONEY" meaning not gratuities or favors. As in CA$H not a diamond ring or fur coat.

To be more blunt, I mean PROSTITUTION by its generally accepted sociological (or legal) definition.

you find out, I'd like to know.

I dont need to make my "to do" list any longer than it allready is.

Life-Net News had an article "Chicago to Give Prostitutes a Hand Up" which estimated there were 16,000 providers in the Windy City in 2002. If the population then was around 2.8 million, this would indicate a figure of less than 1 percent, perhaps .6% (or .006).

"Officials...point out that for many of the estimated 16,000 prostitutes in the city, especially those with felony convictions, there is no place else to turn."

Send an email to 200k women.  Ask them the question "have you ever committed an act of prostitution?".  Tell them, before answering to roll a single die.  If the # comes up 1 or 2 then lie otherwise tell the truth.  This technique will make it more likely they will answer your question.  You can now solve for the true proportion from the proportion of yes responses you receive.  Of you don't understand how to do the arithmetic, PM me and I will give you the equation.
 

Problem with the technique:  you are only talking to women who use email.  I would bet it would bias your answer down....Harry

-- Modified on 2/8/2004 2:13:15 PM

will at some point in their lives work as a prostitute.  I can try to post more tomorrow if you're interested.

The calc above missed two factors which are the calc for female prostitutes s/b compared to the female population which is about 52% of the total.  Also, age must be accounted for.  This can be done by either limiting the comparison population to those women aged about 18 - 35 or by calculating based on the average number of years someone works as a prostitute.

Every girl who's slept with a guy she dated because he lavished time, money and/or enegery on her is a provider of 'one sort'

You were asking about the percent of women (not percent of total population). In that case, the metric for Chicago might be around 1%.

Nevada has 9000 registered prostitutes. The total number of women in Nevada exceeds 850,000.  That is roughly in the 1% range.  (STATE OF NEVADA HEALTH DIVISION.)

If you are interested in statistics, check out the link below.

"The maximum speed at which erotic sensations travel from skin to brain has been clocked at 156 miles per hour."

"The vagina and the eye are self-cleaning organs."

"The funtion of pubic hair is to act as an odor trap for secretions released by the apocrine glands located in the pubic and armpit areas. Once the secretions are released, the hair traps the scent, enabling it to linger and act as an erotic stimulus to the opposite sex. Incidentally, women possess 75 percent more scent glands than men."

Thanks but 4.2% sounds a bit high especially in a relatively well off country like the US.  If you could provide a source link that would be great.

Reo you have a source?

Let's take the 16,000 number in the article as a source.  There's alot we don't know about this number such as if it includes male and female providers, if it is just street workers or if it includes bar spiders, agencies, massage, or independents.  We also don't know if this is just Chicago proper or Chicago metro (all the funding sources are Chicago city or Cook Cty so we'll assume it's Chicago proper.)  For simplicity we'll assume it includes all female providers.  In reality it likely does include male providers and does not include most independents.

Chicago's current population is 2,896,016 of which 1,490,909 are female.  The 16,000 number is a snapshot in time.  If someone is born a provider and always is a provider then dividing the 16k number into the female population is correct.  However, within the population there are a number of women who have never worked as providers but will and there are a number who have retired.  How do we then determine how many people will be or have been providers?

The simplest and most conservative is to assume that all providers are between 18 and 35.  There are  438,573 females in Chicago between 18 and 35.  Calculating this gives you 3.65% of the women between 18 and 35 are providers.  This has several problems though.  There are women younger than 18 who are providers (likely not included in the 16k, but who knows) and there are some over 35 who are.  The big one though is that there are a number within the age band who will be or have been providers but are not currently and thus not counted.

So, another way to look at it is based on years in the business.  This number is all over, but a conservatively high number is 5.5 years (a lower number gives higher results so the higher the number of years in the busines the lower and thus more conservative (and defensible) the final number.)  The simplest way to do this calc is to artifically compress the age band to 20-24.5 years which is a female population of 132,182 giving us 12% of this population as providers.  A complete forumla calc using an average lifespan of 78 years and taking into account other variables gives 12.65%.  Thus, in Chicago you have 55,977 women who will become providers, 15,862 who currently are (fairly close to 16,000), and 120,166 who are retired.

The 4.2% number is, as you can see, very conservative and thus is also very defensable.  It assumes more years in the business, fewer providers than reality, etc.  You can quadruple the 5.5 years in the business to get 24 years and you're still over 4.2%.  You can also argue that this doesn't account for the women outside the metro, which is very true.  You can include the population outside the metro areas and still remain well above 4.2%  However, a little detective work will also show you that in any population (eg, any county in the US) there is someone providing so you also have to add those providers (past, present, and future) into the calc.

Some fairly intensive analysis of Atlanta and Mpls/St. Paul metro areas gives very similar numbers to those above.

Also, what none of these numbers include are private providers.  These are the receptionists and others who have 2 or 3 clients, usually people they know or work with, but do not advertise.  Anyone care to take a guess on this one?