Can Legalizing Voluntary Prostitution Succeed in Limiting Sex Trafficking?

Abstract

This paper considers 55 different countries and uses each nation’s sex trafficking ratio, which I define as the total number of victims sex trafficked within that country every year, divided by the national population, to examine whether or not countries with legal prostitution legislation have a lower propensity to sex traffic. Using information from the Counter Trafficking Data Collaborative’s Global Data Hub on Human Trafficking (CTDC), my empirical analysis originates with a total of 43,299 individual reports specified as related to sex trafficking, recorded between the years 2002-2018. These reports are all combined into the country and year level, so as to scale the number of incidents to the size of each country. Using a binary independent variable of Legal, that being, a country either defines prostitution as legal or illegal, I examine the relationship between the legality of prostitution and sex trafficking. Results indicate a negative relationship between the sex trafficking ratio and legality of prostitution, significantly showing a lower sex trafficking ratio in countries that legalize prostitution. A second analysis acknowledges the various standards of “legality,” as several nations do not clearly identify prostitution as illegal or entirely legal, and investigates whether prostitution’s level of legality – barely, somewhat, or very – also affects the propensity of sex trafficking in any particular way. Findings correspond with the original results and predict that as prostitution legislation becomes increasingly legal, there is a continuous decrease in the sex trafficking ratio. However, the conclusions of these results face limitations, given the data on sex trafficking is scarce as the criminal industry operates underground, victims rarely self-report, and nations do not always choose to be honest when reporting their incidents to the CTDC.