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Most of the trackers were former prostitutes—an important credential because such women were more likely to get honest responses. Venkatesh also paid the prostitutes for participating in the study. If they were willing to have sex for money, he reasoned, surely they’d be willing to talk about having sex for money. And they were. Over the course of nearly two years, Venkatesh accumulated data on roughly 160 prostitutes in three separate South Side neighborhoods, logging more than 2,200 sexual transactions.

The tracking sheets recorded a considerable variety of data, including:

The specific sexual act performed, and the duration of the trickWhere the act took place (in a car, outdoors, or indoors)Amount received in cashAmount received in drugsThe customer’s raceThe customer’s approximate ageThe customer’s attractiveness (10 = sexy, 1 = disgusting)Whether a condom was usedWhether the customer was new or returningIf it could be determined, whether the customer was married; employed; affiliated with a gang; from the neighborhoodWhether the prostitute stole from the customerWhether the customer gave the prostitute any trouble, violent or otherwiseWhether the sex act was paid for, or was a “freebie”

So what can these data tell us?

Let’s start with wages. It turns out that the typical street prostitute in Chicago works 13 hours a week, performing 10 sex acts during that period, and earns an hourly wage of approximately $27. So her weekly take-home pay is roughly $350. This includes an average of $20 that a prostitute steals from her customers and acknowledges that some prostitutes accept drugs in lieu of cash—usually crack cocaine or heroin, and usually at a discount. Of all the women in Venkatesh’s study, 83 percent were drug addicts.

Like LaSheena, many of these women took on other, non-prostitution work, which Venkatesh also tracked. Prostitution paid about four times more than those jobs. But as high as that wage premium may be, it looks pretty meager when you consider the job’s downsides. In a given year, a typical prostitute in Venkatesh’s study experienced a dozen incidents of violence. At least 3 of the 160 prostitutes who participated died during the course of the study. “Most of the violence by johns is when, for some reason, they can’t consummate or can’t get erect,” says Venkatesh. “Then he’s shamed—‘I’m too manly for you’ or ‘You’re too ugly for me!’ Then the john wants his money back, and you definitely don’t want to negotiate with a man who just lost his masculinity.”

Moreover, the women’s wage premium pales in comparison to the one enjoyed by even the low-rent prostitutes from a hundred years ago. Compared with them, women like LaSheena are working for next to nothing.

Why has the prostitute’s wage fallen so far?

Because demand has fallen dramatically. Not the demand for sex. That is still robust. But prostitution, like any industry, is vulnerable to competition.

Who poses the greatest competition to a prostitute? Simple: any woman who is willing to have sex with a man for free.

It is no secret that sexual mores have evolved substantially in recent decades. The phrase “casual sex” didn’t exist a century ago (to say nothing of “friends with benefits”). Sex outside of marriage was much harder to come by and carried significantly higher penalties than it does today.

Imagine a young man, just out of college but not ready to settle down, who wants to have some sex. In decades past, prostitution was a likely option. Although illegal, it was never hard to find, and the risk of arrest was minuscule. While relatively expensive in the short term, it provided good long-term value because it didn’t carry the potential costs of an unwanted pregnancy or a marriage commitment. At least 20 percent of American men born between 1933 and 1942 had their first sexual intercourse with a prostitute.

Now imagine that same young man twenty years later. The shift in sexual mores has given him a much greater supply of unpaid sex. In his