Atlanta's underground sex trade is larger than Seattle, D. The price of a sex act in major U. More pimps shell out for transportation and housing than for hotels or clothes. Those are just a few of the insights gleaned from a massive new government-sponsored study from the Urban Institute on the underground economies of sex, drugs, and guns in eight cities: Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington, D.
Lead researcher Meredith Dank spent three years talking with former pimps, sex workers, and law officials. For example, the report finds that coercion and encouragement from family members to make money was a bigger factor in persuading women to go into and stay in prostitution than physical violence.
Here are eight facts from the report. Most of the statistics are from , recorded in dollars. Atlanta has the biggest sex economy among the studied cities, by far. Dallas has the largest market for drugs or guns. More useful might be share of the cash market As a share of each city's cash economy i. San Diego has the biggest underground drug economy. If you add all the underground economies together, you'll see the largest combined black markets by city are: Atlanta, Miami, San Diego, and Dallas.
Across the studied cities, the largest underground market is sex, followed by drugs, then guns. It's hard from the data to tell if these underground markets are growing nationally. In five of the studied cities, the illegal sex economy shrunk between and , but the illegal drug economy grew in five; the underground gun economy is rising in three and falling in three.
Atlanta pimps take in the most money. San Diego pimps do the worst, relative to the size of their illegal sex market. Pimps find prostitutes from their friend groups. Social circles and home neighborhood are more likely venues for pimps to scout than clubs or the Internet.
