Punting population ?

[crazytrain]

 Out of curiosity, what percentage of the UK population see WGs. I cannot see much activity around the forum and not many girls on AW as well. Would it be 10, 25  or 50 percent?

 My guess would be on the 10% mark.

[maxxblue]

Out of curiosity, what percentage of the UK population see WGs. I cannot see much activity around the forum and not many girls on AW as well. Would it be 10, 25  or 50 percent?

 My guess would be on the 10% mark.

This is a bit of a pointless post, as guessing is pointless. There is no way of making an accurate guess. It would be more useful to ask if anyone knows what the research says about the prevalence of punting. 

[peter purves]

This is a bit of a pointless post, as guessing is pointless. There is no way of making an accurate guess. It would be more useful to ask if anyone knows what the research says about the prevalence of punting. 

Here's one study's figure - 11%:

Third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles study, analysed by the University College London

External Link/Members Only

[crazytrain]

 Knew I was right...

 So not so popular, considering the size of the UK population then, must be due to the quality and price.

[PickleTwiddler]

I was at an event where a copper was giving a talk on this stuff and he reckoned about 1 in 10 UK men has seen a WG at least once.

[maxxblue]

Knew I was right...

 So not so popular, considering the size of the UK population then, must be due to the quality and price.

You didn't know - as you say, you guessed

Out of curiosity, what percentage of the UK population see WGs. I cannot see much activity around the forum and not many girls on AW as well. Would it be 10, 25  or 50 percent?

 My guess would be on the 10% mark.

[bristolqwerty]

I remember seeing it listed as 20% recently. Good for the economy and sergei.

  100% of those who saw  EE escorts instantly regretted it 

[maxxblue]

20% apparently.

Where did you get this figure from?

[bristolqwerty]

External Link/Members Only
Here I think  1992 though  but I did see a recent article that stated 20% again, just a different 20% I guess.

100% of those who saw  EE escorts instantly regretted it 

This figure was gathered more accurately from ukp reviews 

[Malvolio]

There's a big difference between the percentage of men who have punted and the percentage of men who are active punters.

[Buttons]

And not everyone that punts talks about it, even on forums like this where there is a high degree on anonymity if your are careful.

All you can say for sure is that it is a minority sport.

[mrhappypants]

Crazytrain, read you post and I wonder if the combined effect of internet resources like UKP and AW are bringing a whole wave of men into punting who would never have done it previously.  I hear the stories of punters before AW using the cards in phone boxes or the adds in shop windows and it sounds like a different world.  I think the increased predictability and discretion of punting could have the effect of vastly increasing the number of punters. 

Dave

[smiths]

Out of curiosity, what percentage of the UK population see WGs. I cannot see much activity around the forum and not many girls on AW as well. Would it be 10, 25  or 50 percent?

 My guess would be on the 10% mark.

The fact is no ones knows the answer to this despite what so called stats and figures might say. The reason is many punters wish to punt as anonymously as possible so they wouldn't be answering surveys, its a secret pastime for many so accurate stats aren't possible. Its also not known how many WGs there are as at least some of them want to be under the official radar, so again stats wouldn't include them.

[crazytrain]

Crazytrain, read you post and I wonder if the combined effect of internet resources like UKP and AW are bringing a whole wave of men into punting who would never have done it previously.  I hear the stories of punters before AW using the cards in phone boxes or the adds in shop windows and it sounds like a different world.  I think the increased predictability and discretion of punting could have the effect of vastly increasing the number of punters. 

Dave

 Yes you are right. AW and UKP are enticing punters. I still believe that the punting rate is very low, reading some of the reviews and posts here I can see why.
 FFS, we are supposed to pay a very high rate for a service for which the girls cannot be bothered to put in a good act for 30- 40 minutes. It's daylight robbery if you ask me, makes me wonder if I should immerse myself in this world.

[paul_2407]

I've had a stab at tackling this question from a more data-driven approach.

In 2014, prostitution was estimated by the government to add £4.3 billion to the economy.

Assumptions for punting population estimation:
On average, those who punt frequent a WG twice a month (I.e. 24 times per year)
On average, punts are £100 per visit

Calculation:
£4.3bn in 2014, divided by 24 visits per punter per year, divided by an average £100 per punt = 1.8m punters

Sense checking the calculation
As a percentage of the total UK population (64m), that is c. 2.8%.
Most punters are above 15 and male - there are 11m below the age of 15 (see Wiki source), and the male population is approximately half of the total UK population. 64m - 11m equals 53m, and half of that is 26.5m. Based on the estimate of 1.8m punters, that is c. 7% of the adult male population.

Obviously this could be refined if we get a better idea of how the £4.3bn was estimated, and did a poll of punter visit frequency and average spend.


Sources:
External Link/Members Only

External Link/Members Only

External Link/Members Only

[bobbles1945]

Well it’s all guestimates. There is an interesting discussion in this Home office sponsored research document “Tackling the demand for prostitution: a rapid evidence assessment of the published research literature” ( available here  External Link/Members Only ) see pgs 2-4

In brief there are two ways that have been used to estimate the size of the punting population-one(the calculative method) is to use the estimated size of the prostitute population and multiply by the number of assumed customers per year to arrive at the total number of prostitute client encounters. In the UK those estimates give about 64M client visits per year.

Making assumptions about  the number of regulars this gives a guestimate that  11-50% of UK men use prostitutes-which is obviously way out of line with social survey methods which indicate that only about 10% of men admit to ever having used a prostitute and that around 4 per cent of men reported paying for sex in the past five years and about 1 per cent reported paying for it in the previous 12 months. Which as the document points out would mean “a client population of 175,380, each of whom would need to pay for sex every single day of the year to account for the total estimated number of sexual transactions estimated through calculative methods; clearly, both estimates cannot be accurate.” (p3 col2)

Clearly some of the assumptions are wrong. The same topic was approached in Denmark (see here  External Link/Members Only
 (see here for the Google translate version nof the paper on which this is based)  External Link/Members Only) Briefly what this document shows is that the estimate of the number of prostitutes was too high-as was the assumed number of clients they saw-and also that while the proportion of Danish men who had ever seen a prostitute was around 14% there are a subset (3%) of very active prostitute visitors (hobbyists), it was these who accounted for most of the prostitute visits. Using the corrected numbers the results from the calculative methods and social survey methods could be brought into balance.

Fap’s approach is to start with a figure which itself is based on a huge number of assumptions (again estimate of the size of the prostitute population, number of clients and cost per visit see External Link/Members Only) and work backwards.  But as I said it’s all guesswork

[Lister]

This is a subject I have often pondered about in idle moments 

As you say, all the figures are based largely on guesswork as it is almost impossible to get accurate data from any source. Punting is a secretive business and is almost certainly under reported in all surveys as most punters are not going to admit to their hobby. It is even difficult to get accurate figures on the number of WG's out there. Government figures in the late nineties put it at around 80,000 and around 100,000 in the year 2000. these figures were based on data from GUM clinics and so may not be a million miles off the mark. However that was before the internet arrived and the large influx of eastern Europeans over the past 15 years. I suspect the internet has increased the number and availability of WG's dramatically. It is much easier to select a punt at leisure from the comfort of your home than to take a punt (literally) on a card in a phone box.

As we are into guessing, I would hazard a guess that there are probably around 120,000 WG's in the UK now. OP was working his data out working back from the contributions to the economy, which itself is a highly dubious figure. Looking at it from the other side (and taking even more leaps of faith) if there are 120,000 WG's seeing on average around 4 punters a day five days a week = 80 punts a month. That is 9,600,000 punts in the UK in a month.

now if we take into account those people who punt once and never again, The occasion punter who is away on business and the hobbyists who punt weekly we can guess that the average punter punts once a month. so that makes over 9 1/2 million punters.

there are 64 million people in the UK of which half are men (32 million). Assuming a lifespan of 80 years and an average punting lifespan of forty years between age 20 and 60 that reduces the pool of people of punting age to around 16 million.

By that estimate, up to 60% of the male population between 20 and 60 are active punters. Assuming most punters do not punt continuously for forty years, the total percentage of people who punt at some stage in their life must be higher than that.

Now I suspect this is a gross over estimate, but I also suspect the figure of 10% that the government bandies about based on the number of punters that admit to it, is also a gross underestimate. The truth lies somewhere in between.

Either way it is a surprisingly large percentage of the male population!

[Malvolio]

I don't think the estimate of the average (mean) punting spend being £2,400 a year is reasonable - some punters will be spending that amount each month (I'm thinking rich city boys) which will skew the mean punting spend upwards.

I'm also assuming the government stats include rent boys - but I have no idea what percentage of gay men use them.

[Lister]

As far as I know the government stats only included female prostitutes and there can't be many who spend £2,400 a month punting. 

[bobbles1945]

Well to continue with the guestimate game-I think Lister is probably overestimating. The oft quoted figure of 80,000 for England and Wales comes (as he says) from a survey of GUM clinics by Kinnel et al (1999) and includes those based on the streets and indoors and not only women but men and transsexuals.

In an updated study done last year the number was further refined to 72,800 (see Belinda Brookes-Gordon explaining the methodology (External Link/Members Only)

It is unclear if the numbers are those in regular contact with the service-or if one-off visits are also counted. It is likely however that this is an overestimate of those in prostitution on any day and closer to those who have been in prostitution over a year or more.

An alternative way to get an estimate of the number of prostitutes is to monitor advertisements. This used to be done by counting small ads in the papers and making assumptions about how many were behind each ad. This was the method used by project Acumen (External Link/Members Only) where they estimated the number as 30,000 for England and Wales

Nowadays of course most advertise on AW (apart from those working in brothels, walk-ups Saunas, parties and escort agencies) (see here see Nicola Smith and Sarah 1 Kingston (2015) Policy-Relevant Report: Statistics on Sex Work in the UK, 7 October 2015, University of Birmingham and Lancaster University  External Link/Members Only) and also see Fogg A 2014  How much does prostitution contribute to the UK economy  External Link/Members Only also External Link/Members Only
Fog A 2014 b import.io  Gender differences amongst sex workers online External Link/Members Only  where there is a guestimate of around 54,000 sex workers. So the numbers “guessed” at by Lister seem on the high side.

You must remember that AW provides a number who are working over a short period whereas those estimates from GUM clinics will give larger numbers as those are accumulated over a year or more. So 3 Romanians who rotate and each stay 4 months each will count as one on AW-and were they to attend clinics-would count as three.

Turning to the assumptions about the number of clients per day that Lister uses again these are on the high side-as are the assumptions that girls work each day and every week in the year. Survey data suggests that 2-3 clients a day is more normal and over a week the most common number of clients is in the range 1-10 ( see External Link/Members Only)
If we plug these modified numbers (number of working girls and number of clients per week) into Lister’s assumptions we get closer to a more reasonable estimate as to the proportion of men who punt.

[tazz]

Just saw a discussion on channel 4 news on this in which the stat of 10% of men was mentioned, this has shot up over the past ten years. I blame women becoming more fussy on who they date. Also tons of young gusy now paying for sex, maybe there's too many men here.

External Link/Members Only