David Spiegelhalter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. But is this a reasonable estimate? To quote the ONS:. This assessment has been severely questioned. Brooke Magnanti, aka blogger Belle de Jour , reckoned it might be ten times too high. Another blogger, Jolyon, who writes for Tax Relief 4 Escorts and who claims a maths degree from Cambridge, did a detailed critique.
He points out the flaws in the survey on which the 61, is based, and claims the assumed workload is too high and that the cost per visit which the ONS based on PunterNet seems too low: it is somewhat ironic that the ONS use an information source that a previous minister, Harriet Harman, tried to shut down. My feeling is that the assumption that has the most problems is the workload.
ONS are suggesting that the average person who works in prostitution has around 1, clients a year. Many are part-time. The ONS assumptions come to around 75m visits a year. There are around 20m men aged between 18 and 65 in the UK taking an arbitrary upper limit , so this would mean that on average each of them buys sex three times a year.
If there were really more than a million visits a week, then the average man who paid for sex at any time in the last five years did so considerably more often than once a week.
I am no expert on the behaviour of this sub group, but this does seem rather high, to say the least; a study of men in Scotland who pay for sex found a mean of only five partners in a year. Although this is a big statistical challenge, such an important contribution to the economy deserves a more robust analysis. When better figures come out I predict the UK will be due a substantial rebate.
