What is the number of child prostitute in Thailand ?

Abstract

The paper estimates a number of child prostitution in Thailand at any one time in 1997. A child in this estimate refers to a person aged below 18 years old. It is the first estimate that includes Thai and non-Thai sex workers and is broken down by gender and age. The estimation procedure is straightforward by estimating the undercount rate of the 1997 annual survey of establishments and sex worker conducted by Department of Communicable Diseases Control of Ministry of Public Health. This would yield the total number of foreign sex workers, the proportion of child prostitute, the proportion of the sex workers who entered sex work before 18 years old are estimated by using various sources of data. It is estimated that 17,978 or 20% of the total number of sex workers (90,916) in Thailand in 1997 were child prostitutes. Of this, about 12,500 were Thai and 5,500 were transnational. The number of sex workers entering sex work at early age was around 50,000.