Gender Differences in Remittance Behavior: Evidence from Viet Nam

Abstract

"This paper investigates the role of gender in remittance behavior among migrants using data drawn from the 2004 Vietnam Migration Survey. The gender dimension to remittance behavior is not an issue that has featured strongly in the existing literature and our findings thus contain novel appeal. In addition, we use estimates from both homoscedastic and heteroscedastic tobit models to decompose the observed gender differences in remittances into treatment and endowment components. The paper finds little evidence that gender differences in remittances are attributable to behavioral differences between men and women. Instead, the empirical results show that endowment differences, such as gender differences in household head status and labor market earnings, are more important in explaining the overall gender difference in the remittance level. "