My-Lien Le
James Madison University
Subject Listing - Political Science
Advisor: Dr. Gary Kirk
Friday, Oral Session 4, Presentation 5, Karpen Hall 033
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ECONOMIC STATUS OF COUNTRIES AND THEIR EFFORTS TO PREVENT HUMAN TRAFFICKING
As an issue of public policy, the United States government opposes prostitution and any related activities that contribute to the trafficking of persons. Demonstrating this commitment, the U.S. passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) which threatens suspension of non-humanitarian aid for countries that fail to make progress. Despite these efforts, the trafficking of women and children for sexually exploitive purposes continues to be a growing transnational crime. This paper hypothesizes that a nation's economic condition and its level of effort in reducing human trafficking are related. Using gross national income per capita (GNI/capita) as a measure of economic status, data were collected for 195 nations for the years 2001 through 2004. Tier rankings, determined by the U.S. Department of State, were used as an estimate of each country's human trafficking prevention effort for each year. With the tier ranking as the dependent variable, there was a moderate association between the two variables (Somer's d=-.299). The relationship between these variables was found to be statistically significant using a chi square test (chi-square = 141.1, df = 6, p<.001). The results indicated that 79.5% countries that were ranked as having made substantial efforts to reduce trafficking (Tier 1) were in the highest quartile of GNI/capita; however, among noncompliant countries (Tier 3) cases were more equally distributed between GNI/capita quartiles. This pattern may indicate that socio-cultural issues are more important than economic factors in some countries. These preliminary results confirm the need for further research that accounts for additional explanatory factors. As well, a reliable source for statistics on human trafficking and GNI estimates for poor countries would improve this line of study.
Advisor: Dr. Gary Kirk, Assistant Professor, Public Administration, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA