The poor receive less: Remittance behaviour of female migrants in Myanmar

Abstract

The effectiveness of remittances in poverty reduction depends on the remittance distribution in low-income households. Existing studies have found that low-income households received low remittances and inferred that the primary motive for remittances is securing future inheritance. We investigate the remittance decisions of unmarried female migrants in Myanmar who have no inheritance rights and find that migrants from low-income households remit less. A decomposition analysis suggests that the marriage prospects provided by parents explain around 40% of this correlation. The fact that parents of poor households fail to arrange matches from better-off families for their daughters has pushed young female migrants to spend more on partnersearching activities instead of sending remittances to their families.