The Economics of Prostitution

Today in class we talked about the selling of illegal items and one such item was the human body. Economists Lena Edlund and Evelyn Korn considered wives and whores as economic "goods" that can be substituted for each other. Men buy, women sell.

Economists have been trying to find out how money and marriage relate to each other ever since Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker published his seminal paper "A Theory of Marriage". Becker used market analysis to answer, or at least try to answer the question of whom, when and why we marry. He believes that our spousal selection is a market, and marriages occur only if there is a profit for both parties involved.

Edlund and Korn admit that spouses and streetwalkers aren't alike. Wives are superior to whores in the economist's sense of being a good whose consumption increases as income rises. This could be a possible explanation prostitution is less common in wealthier countries. But the implication remains that wives and whores are the same sort of thing.
Why do hookers make so much money? Prostitution seems to be a low-skill profession, but high-pay profession with few upfront costs, super-miniskirts and stiletto heels. Yet data gathered from different times and places found that prostitutes make more money than a woman that works for a living. This is found to be true in places where prostitution is legal and relatively safe. In short, streetwalkers aren't necessarily being paid more for their increased risk of going to jail or the hospital.


Another zinger: "This begs the question of why married men go to prostitutes (rather than buying from their wives, who presumably will be low-cost providers, considering that they can sell non-reproductive sex without compromising their marriage)." Guys, nothing says "Happy Valentine's Day" more than "low-cost provider."


http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/2006/02/11/economics-prostitution-marriage_cx_mn_money06_0214prostitution.html