The Economist took a look at the rise of “sugar babies”:

• Today three quarters of all American graduates leave college in debt.
• This is up from the roughly half of all graduates that left with debt in 1995 – and the amount of debt carried these days is a lot higher than before.
• In contrast two thirds of those who sign up to be sugar babies – typically women who trade companionship and sex for money – leave college without debt.
• The monthly “rate” for a sugar baby is around $3,000, although some of the wealthier men pay much more.
• Websites such as SeekingArragement help facilitate the transaction. They got a big boost during the most recent recession, and have continued to grow rapidly, with one almost doubling in membership size in the past two years.
• In fact SeekingArrangement has done so well that it no longer needs to advertize, though back in the day its adverts would pop up if anybody searched for terms such as “student loan”.
• Those in the industry argue that this is not prostitution. Since the participants establish a relationship that usually lasts for at least a few weeks, it is labelled as “compensation for companionship”.
• Any attempts to ban this could inadvertently ban marriage.

Read more here.

Source: The Economist