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SEXTRADE-master675WASHINGTON — A street prostitute in Dallas may make as little as $5 per sex act. But pimps can take in $33,000 a week in Atlanta, where the sex business brings in an estimated $290 million per year. It is not nearly as lucrative in Denver, where prostitution and other elements of an underground trade are worth about $40 million.

Those are some of the findings of a landmark government-sponsored report on the size and structure of the sex economy, including massage parlors, brothels and expensive escort services. The study also found that four in five pimps elect not to deal drugs and that little money trades hands in the child pornography business.

(…) The study focused on the business side, rather than on consumers, and researchers conducted more than 250 interviews with law enforcement officers, lawyers, pimps, sex traffickers, prostitutes and child pornographers, many of whom were in jail. Those interviews provide a wealth of data on pricing, market structures and the sex workers’ motivations.