Narrowing the gender gap in mobile banking

• Published in: Journal of economic behavior & organization Vol. 193; pp. 276 - 293
• Main Authors: Lee, Jean N., Morduch, Jonathan, Ravindran, Saravana, Shonchoy, Abu S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.01.2022
• Subjects: Bangladesh; Digital money; Domestic migration; Field experiment; Financial inclusion; Gender; Migration; Remittances; Bangladesh; R23; Financial inclusion; O16; Migration; Digital money; Domestic migration; Gender; Remittances; Field experiment; O33
• ISSN: 0167-2681; 1879-1751
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.10.005

•Mobile banking can make financial services cheaper and more accessible, but gender gaps in usage persist.•In a sample of migrants and their rural families in Bangladesh, gender gaps were narrowed with training and support.•An RCT shows large increases in active usage: by 51 percentage points for female migrants and 46 percentage points for males.•By endline, the female-to-male ratio of active users in the treatment group was 85%, compared to 35% in the control group.•Male migrants were much more likely to use mobile money to send remittances back home, however. 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.