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Andrew Fogg
Sex, drugs and data: UK GDP Redux
Friday 27 June 2014presented by
this talk is mainly about sex
and data
no drugs I am afraid
let’s start with a question
how much does prostitution contribute to the UK economy?
£1bn?
£2bn?
£5.314bn
0.4% GDP
£5.314bnthat is a big number
bigger than the entire economy of Moldova
bigger than 28% of global economies
but it would only buy 45% of WhatsApp
restatement of accounts in line with EU accounting guidelines
“illegal transactions to which all parties consent should be included in national accounts”
this includes prostitution and sale of illegal drugs
how did the ONS calculate that number for prostitution?
very simple
there are lots of assumptions and the number of prostitutes relies on one study
tried to count all the prostitutes in London over 6 months in 2004
phoned every brothel and escort agency they could find advertised
estimated count of off-street prostitutes in London (plus estimate of on-street prostitutes from police)
7,000 (+115)
scaled out to the UK using population statistics
how reliable is that number? especially the scaling assumption?
time to look at some web data
many activities associated with prostitution are illegal in the UK
but paying for sex is actually legal
as a result prostitution sits in a grey area and is widely marketed on the web
built an API to AdultWork directory using Import.io
AdultWork is ranked 174 top site in UK by Alexa
searched for all sex workers based in the UK and downloaded the data
categorised each sex worker by location (London / not London)
counted the number of London based prostitutes and estimated the UK total using scale assumption
then counted the number of UK based prostitutes on AdultWork
it seems that the scaling assumption is reasonable
so the ONS numbers are good?
not quite
what is wrong with this picture?
there are no men
“no information is included regarding men working in the sex industry”
40% of the prostitutes on AdultWork are men (in London and across UK)
recalculating GDP to take into account male prostitution gives a dramatic increase
£8.856bnnew number
0.6% GDP
the new total is bigger than the entire economy of Iceland
bigger than 37% of global economies
but it would still only buy 75% of WhatsApp
this is only a preliminary analysis
but i just added £3.542bn to the UK economy
plan to investigate further by examining the price per visit (data is also available on the web)
benefit of using web data for this kind of analysis is that it is up to date and can be tracked