Estimating the Prostitution Population in the Netherlands and Belgium: A Capture-Recapture Application to Online Data

Anahita Azam, Jef Hendrickx and Stef Adriaenssens

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Evidence-based risk-prevention policies for people involved in prostitution require that reliable population estimates are built. This study proposes a methodological framework and novel data source for measuring their population in regions where the internet plays a predominant role in the industry. We derive single registration capture-recapture population estimates using the Zelterman approach. The resulting estimates for the Netherlands and Belgium are lower than previous rough estimates. We find that relative to the overall population of the two countries, the proportion of sex workers are roughly identical despite differing legal environments.

Keywords: Hidden population; Sex worker population; Population size estimation; Capture-recapture; Internet data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E26 I18 J16 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-10-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/110505/1/MPRA_paper_110505.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:110505

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter (winter@lmu.de).