Working Paper: NBER ID: w20281
Authors: Scott Cunningham; Manisha Shah
Abstract: Most governments in the world including the United States prohibit prostitution. Given these types of laws rarely change and are fairly uniform across regions, our knowledge about the impact of decriminalizing sex work is largely conjectural. We exploit the fact that a Rhode Island District Court judge unexpectedly decriminalized indoor prostitution in 2003 to provide the first causal estimates of the impact of decriminalization on the composition of the sex market, rape offenses, and sexually transmitted infection outcomes. Not surprisingly, we find that decriminalization increased the size of the indoor market. However, we also find that decriminalization caused both forcible rape offenses and gonorrhea incidence to decline for the overall population. Our synthetic control model finds 824 fewer reported rape offenses (31 percent decrease) and 1,035 fewer cases of female gonorrhea (39 percent decrease) from 2004 to 2009.
Keywords: prostitution; decriminalization; sexual violence; public health; gonorrhea
JEL Codes: I18; J16; K42
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Increase in the size of the indoor sex market (J46) | Decrease in costs of entry for sex workers (J39) |
| Decriminalization of indoor prostitution in Rhode Island (K25) | Increase in the size of the indoor sex market (J46) |
| Decriminalization of indoor prostitution in Rhode Island (K25) | Decrease in forcible rape offenses (K42) |
| Decriminalization of indoor prostitution in Rhode Island (K25) | Decrease in gonorrhea incidence (H22) |