Their recent working paper (pdf), which they presented at this weekend's ASSA conference (the yearly get-together where social scientists from around the world preview their research) in New Orleans, is based on surveys conducted with prostitutes and pimps in Chicago neighborhoods and incident data from the Chicago Police Department. The findings? Street prostitution yields an average wage of $27 an hour, hardly worth it considering the extraordinary occupational hazards. What's particularly interesting is the authors' section on bargaining and the law. They estimate that roughly 3 percent of all tricks performed by prostitutes who aren't working with pimps are freebies given to police to avoid arrest. In fact, prostitutes get officially arrested only once per 450 tricks or so, leading the authors to conclude that "a prostitute is more likely to have sex with a police officer than to get officially arrested by one." When freebies given to gang members are factored in, about one in 20 tricks go solely for protection and the "privilege" of plying their trade.

I�ve found the higher-paid women are abused about twice per year by their clients. I define �abuse� as suffering physical pain that prevents them from working and that includes visits to the hospital. Of course, no one is going to feel sorry for people earning thousands of dollars, but that doesn�t mean women avoid exploitation, violence, and danger altogether by making more money than they would on the streets.