Understanding remittance gender gap in the United States: The role of gendered expectations

Using the Latino National Survey (LNS), we analyze the gender gap in remittance behavior and argue that gendered expectations of home families in sending countries play a key role. We show that among Hispanics in the U.S., women are less likely to remit than men, and when they do, they transfer smaller amounts. The remittance gender gap is not universal among subgroups since it is only observable among Hispanics who came to the U.S. to improve their economic situation, plan to go back, and have low-­‐income and low educational background. To support our argument, we construct an index on migrant's perceptions regarding gender roles as a proxy for the home family's gender views. We show that groups that displayed more traditional gender views perfectly coincide with groups with a significant gender gap in remittances.