Some time ago I posted a couple of comments on the Survey of Adult Services Providers that was conducted by Scott Cunningham of Baylor University and Todd Kendall. This was a survey of 685 sex workers conducted in 2008 and 2009 with 265 questions. Actual data about our favorite industry is rather rare so the resulting series of papers are potentially worth a look. I promised another post on the paper devoted to college-educated sex workers and now, while there seems to be a little break in the ego wars, here it is.
The source paper,
www.toddkendall.net/moonlighting.pdf, is 44 pages long so this is necessarily a bit of a condensation. Summary points, usually quoted directly but occasionally paraphrased by me in less “academic” language:
College graduates, conditional on working in the last week(before taking the survey), earn roughly 31% more than non-graduates
Even though they are substantially less likely to work in any given week, when they do work, they see more clients and provide longer sessions.
A 31% earnings premium is consistent with the literature on the returns to education more broadly, which finds 5% - 12% annual returns from an additional year of schooling
However college-educated sex workers do not earn higher hourly wages for most sessions.
But college education is associated with longer sessions with higher total pay.
And therefore a college education is associated with a roughly 15% wage premium resulting from longer sessions.
College graduation is associated with a nearly 13% increase in the likelihood of a session 60 minutes or longer
Conditional on working, college-educated workers see nearly 25% more clients.
College-educated providers appear to be able to attract 32.4% more regulars.
Regular clients generally involve lower violence and arrest risk; moreover, “sex workers may be able to form warmer, less ‘transactional’, relationships with regulars. Hence, a higher share of regular clients may represent a valued job amenity, which college-educated workers are better able to attain.”
College-educated sex workers rate the attractiveness of their clients higher, roughly 0.37 points higher on a 10 point scale, which corresponds to a 6.3% increase over the mean value.
College-educated sex workers are 6.7% more likely to kiss their clients, “potentially reflecting a more intimate relationship.”
College-educated sex workers are 6.4% more likely to travel out of state to meet clients.
College-educated sex workers perceive significantly lower risk of arrest associated with their work.
Interestingly, college does not seem to be correlated with individual women’s perception of the danger of client violence or discovery risks.
College-educated workers are 24.6% more likely to have an outside job.
College-educated workers appear to work roughly 12.2% fewer weeks in the prostitution market.
One percent of sessions involved a physical assault by the client.
Finally, the survey found college-educated workers appear to be 22.9% less likely to provide fellatio without a condom
That last is the only item that strongly contrasted with my personal experience. Like many, I avoid those who do not provide the semi-sacred BBBJ but the dividing line around here lately seems to have moved on to CIM, yes or no.
The paper asserts,
”Previous theoretical literature has largely ignored education as a determinant of prostitute wages, because sexual labor is intrinsically physical. We show that, in fact, there are large pecuniary returns to education among sex workers, as well as substantially better job amenities in the form of higher-quality clients, lower arrest risk, and the ability to bundle sexual services with companionship and other non-sexual services.”
This appears to take the view that less sex in a session is a positive thing from the point of view of a sex worker, which is certain the belief of many Customer Guys. That “higher-quality clients” might potentially provide “better job amenities” in the form of better on-the-job sex appears to not have been a possibility that occurred to the academicians. They take the reported increased propensity of college-educated women to kiss their clients and rate them a little more attractive as “potentially reflecting a more intimate relationship”. Unfortunately there is no way to know if the customer guys in question are actually any better looking or better kissers. However, education is a proxy for intelligence and there is a lot of evidence that, in general, when people are pairing off with the thought of making a little whoopie they do tend to pick partners with similar intelligence. Might that be happening in the sex business as well? On
both sides of the selection process? That is a Really interesting possibility.
BTW, looking over the last 15 ladies I have seen, most have at least some college although it is not always clear who has a degree. At least two or three have Masters, in Something. All of them are clever enough to be able to appear not Too smart to men who are frightened by smart women.
College Educated Sex Workers
