Some Statistics Concerning The Morality of Whoremongering

United Nations agency (ILO), estimates the number of prostitutes in Thailand to between 200,000 and 300,000. The majority are adult women, but in the Thai sex market are also men, transvestites and children for sale.

Prostitution is concentrated in the tourist resorts Bangkok, Pattaya and Phuket.

A clear majority of prostitutes are of Thai origin, but women from Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and China has become a common feature of the country's brothels.

There are more prostitutes of foreign origin in Thailand than there are Thai prostitutes abroad. <Bold claim this and one I am not convinced of – Stick>

Prostitution is a multi-billion dollar industry in Thailand. Families in the rural areas receive annually about 300 million U.S. dollars from prostitutes in the country's tourist resorts, a sum that in many cases exceeds the money coming
from government funded development programs.

How much money prostitution generates altogether is uncertain, but likely, the sex industry's annual turnover exceeds 20 billion U.S. dollars a year, about 7.5% of Thailand's GDP 2009.

I search on ILO, Thailand and prostitution and fund this statistics in a Swedish paper. The newspaper refers to: CATW, ILO.

The GDP numbers are from Wikipedia. Wikipedia refers to IMF.

If 300,000 sends 300 million U.S. dollars to there mostly poor families, each one of them sends about 1000 dollar a year. Lets say 100 dollar a month.

If these numbers are reliable, it gives us an understanding of the underling economic forces, the strength that drags many of Thailand's poor into the bars in Pattaya and the rest of the Thai sex industry.

My guess is that others working in this areas, in shops, hotels, restaurants…as a result of the sex industry but not in it, exceeds 200,000 to 300,000 and that they sends home moor then 300 million U.S. dollars a year to their families.
This is not statistics but I am guessing.

This will double or maybe triple the total sum of 20 billion U.S. dollars. It will raise the sum of 300 millions, ending up in poor rural families, considerable.

As I understand it, this numbers does not include the ones working abroad and the money they are sending home to their families.

According to ILO, they are less than those working in Thailand but I guess they send home more money, as a result of higher earnings in richer countries like Japan, Singapore, Australia, Germany, Sweden, The UK and America.

How many jobs, jobs in other parts of the economy, generate a prostitute? Should we count them in as well when we talk about the morality of whoremongering? The taxi driver who drives the monger to and from the bar, the staff at the hotel,
the waiter who serves he or she food and all others that in one way or another serves the monger and the ones working in the sex industry?

In my first submission, dated 28/1/2010, I asked a lot of questions, like most of you do. What I want to know by asking this questions is on what scientific grounds we stand, when most of us, if not out of scientific knowledge, instinctively
condemn whoremongering and its consequences?

These numbers do not answer any of these questions. I hope they help us to answer some of them better.

Val Lind