@article{a7153394ced841f2a23f4641f9743041,
title = "Narrowing the gender gap in mobile banking",
abstract = "Mobile banking and related digital financial technologies can make financial services cheaper and more widely accessible in low-income economies, but gender gaps persist. We present evidence from two connected field experiments in Bangladesh designed to encourage the adoption and use of mobile banking by poor, illiterate households. The study focuses on migrants who live in Dhaka and send money back to their extended families. Despite large differences between female and male migrants in income and education, the first experiment shows that a training program led to similarly large, positive impacts on mobile banking use by female migrants (a 51 percentage point increase) and male migrants (46 percentage point increase), substantially narrowing the gender gap. However, the increases in adoption did not lead to similar patterns in usage: men increased digital remittances by 11 times as much as women. A second experiment tests whether introducing the technology in the context of family networks made an additional difference to gender gaps. The evidence suggests an 11 percentage point increase in adoption by women and just a 1 percentage point increase by men, although statistical power is low for this comparison and estimates are imprecise.",
keywords = "Bangladesh, Digital money, Domestic migration, Field experiment, Financial inclusion, Gender, Migration, Remittances",
author = "Lee, {Jean N.} and Jonathan Morduch and Saravana Ravindran and Shonchoy, {Abu S.}",
note = "Funding Information: We are grateful to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion; and the International Growth Centre for financial support. Ravindran is funded by a startup grant at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Shonchoy acknowledges fellowship support from IDE-JETRO. Morduch is grateful for support from the Mastercard Impact Fund in collaboration with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. We have benefited from comments from participants at the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Southern Economic Association, Russell Smyth, and anonymous referees. MOMODa Foundation and Gana Unayan Kendra were invaluable in the study{\textquoteright}s implementation, and Masudur Rahman, Sujan Uddin and Niamot Enayet provided excellent research assistance. We are grateful to Prema Narasimhan for contributions to the literature review. This paper incorporates and updates results from a draft circulated as “Family Networks and the Digital Divide: Experimental Evidence on Mobile Banking in Bangladesh.” The training experiment is registered in the AEA RCT Registry with the identifying number AEARCTR-0003149. The family network experiment is AEARCTR-0005722. All views and any errors are our own. Funding Information: ? We are grateful to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion; and the International Growth Centre for financial support. Ravindran is funded by a startup grant at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Shonchoy acknowledges fellowship support from IDE-JETRO. Morduch is grateful for support from the Mastercard Impact Fund in collaboration with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. We have benefited from comments from participants at the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Southern Economic Association, Russell Smyth, and anonymous referees. MOMODa Foundation and Gana Unayan Kendra were invaluable in the study's implementation, and Masudur Rahman, Sujan Uddin and Niamot Enayet provided excellent research assistance. We are grateful to Prema Narasimhan for contributions to the literature review. This paper incorporates and updates results from a draft circulated as ?Family Networks and the Digital Divide: Experimental Evidence on Mobile Banking in Bangladesh.? The training experiment is registered in the AEA RCT Registry with the identifying number AEARCTR-0003149. The family network experiment is AEARCTR-0005722. All views and any errors are our own. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021",
year = "2022",
month = jan,
doi = "10.1016/j.jebo.2021.10.005",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "193",
pages = "276--293",
journal = "Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization",
issn = "0167-2681",
publisher = "Elsevier",
}