Actually, you are 100% correct. Throughout history poverty has driven women into the streets. Like clockwork, every time we go into a recession the number of prostitutes around the casinos on the Gulf Coast noticeably increases. Of course the Mississippi Gulf Coast is a relatively small area, but the same dynamic is seen in most areas when the economy tanks. I expect the number of prostitutes to increase even more than they might otherwise because the social stigma attached to prostitution has been decreasing in recent decades.
In his book, "The Forgotten Soldier," Guy Sajer (a Franco-German conscript soldier in the Wehrmacht during WWII) even commented on the phenomenon, noting that in their retreat through Romania "There were so many prostitutes that I wondered if all of the women in Romania were prostitutes."
That was especially noteworthy because of the level of desperation those women had been driven to. They were trying to solicit the soldiers of a defeated army, which was so short of supplies that the men often fought with each other for scraps of food. What could those women have hoped to acquire? They might have managed to get some worthless currency, but certainly not food. In a battle between hunger and libido, hunger wins every time.
Those in conservative circles often - and rightly - make fun of leftist women who've gone deeply into debt to get a worthless degree in underwater basket weaving, women's studies, sociology or some similarly hollow course of study. Suddenly, millions of these supposedly educated women will find themselves without practical skills to put food on the table and in the larder. This paucity of options will, at least in many cases, lead directly into the world's oldest profession.
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