Motivating Migrants: A Field Experiment on Financial Decision-Making in Transnational Households

Abstract

We randomly assigned male migrant workers in Qatar invitations to a motivational workshop aimed at improving financial habits and encouraging joint decision-making with spouses back home in India. 13-17 months later, we surveyed migrants and wives to estimate intent-to-treat impacts in their transnational households. Wives of treated migrants changed their financial practices, and became more likely to seek out financial education themselves. Treated migrants and their wives became more likely to make joint decisions on money matters. Treatment effects on financial outcomes show potential heterogeneity, with those with lower prior savings saving differentially more than those with higher prior savings.

Who you train matters: Identifying combined effects of financial education on migrant households

“…Cole et al (2011) found no significant average impact of financial literacy training on the likelihood of households opening a bank account in Indonesia, while Gibson et al (2014) find that financial literacy training for migrants in the destination country lead to changes in financial knowledge, but no change in remitting behaviors. Seshan and Yang (2014) obtain results someway between those studies and ours, with no significant effects on savings and remittances in the full sample, but some impacts in a sub-sample of individuals with low baseline savings. Our results therefore raise the question of why effects are stronger in our context, and why they vary by treatment status.…”

“…As such, the remaining family members may have less experience and skill at financial decision-making, and so training can especially help. This contrasts from other migration studies where the migrant is male, and his spouse is the one left behind, as in Seshan and Yang (2014). Examining impacts in other contexts with different types of migrants is an interesting area for future research, as is using larger samples to provide more precision in testing for these complementarities.…”

“…AlthoughSeshan and Yang (2014)'s results do suggest it may be possible to change the routines of a subset of migrants who have been abroad for some time.…”

“…We note thatAshraf et al (2014) have had success interviewing migrants and their family members in person in different countries, whileSeshan and Yang (2014) were able to interview family members via phone surveys from the destination country. In our context we did not have budget for in-person interviewing in the multiple countries migrants went to, and phone surveys were also not within the budget we had, and were also considered difficult to do with female migrants working in the homes of their employers who sometimes put restrictions on their phone call use.…”

The Problem of Food Waste in Different Types of Households on the Example of the Residents of Poland and Polish People Residing in the United Kingdom – Pilot Study

“…The conducted pilot study has shown that the Poles living in the UK more often waste food as compared to the Pole living in Poland. This can be a signal that the radical change of the residence place and the hazards related to its cause that immigrants cope less skillfully with the management of their budget and planning of their daily expenses, which also confirms in their research (Seshan and Yang, 2014). Poland more and more often becomes the place of residence for immigrants, especially from the East.…”