Multiple Systems Estimation and Human Trafficking

Abstract

Multiple Sytems Estimation (MSE) is a statistical method which uses overlap between samples to make inference about the size of the larger population. In 2019, the National Academies convened a panel to assess statistical methods for quantifying the prevalence of human trafficking. The problem is complicated by many factors. Besides the unrealistic assumptions behind the standard capture-recapture model, which are inherited by vanilla MSE, human trafficking has special features. The main message is that there has been a lot of good statistical work on MSE, making the tool far more robust to the biases and complexities of practical applications.