Prostitution costs France over $1.7 bn every year

Paris, May 29 (IANS/EFE) The economic and social costs of prostitution in France amount to 1.6 billion euros ($1.74 billion) a year, which includes aspects such as tax evasion and medical expenses.

Some of those figures, as detailed on Thursday by the newspaper Le Parisien quoting a study by the Mouvement du Nid association, were based on previous data such as medical costs, with an estimated annual price tag between 70 million euros and 102 million euros, and others such as indirect social consequences.

Drawing from interior ministry statistics, the association found that prostitution generates annual revenue of 3.2 billion euros, but it claims that 45 percent of that sum is funneled abroad by the heads of trade networks.

Mouvement du Nid also calculated that 311 million euros was the cost of prostitution in terms of physical and sexual violence, and indirect social consequences ended up costing roughly 306 million euros, which includes the cost of homicide and suicide.

In France, according to the study, 37,000 people work in prostitution, 62 percent of them via the Internet, another 30 percent on the streets, and the remaining 8 percent in local shops or massage parlours.

Mouvement du Nid revealed in their study that calculating such services was complicated, but posited that 85 percent of prostitutes are females, another 10 percent males and the other 5 percent are transsexuals or transgenders.

--IANS/EFE

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