The roles of gender and education in the intrahousehold allocation of remittances of Filipino migrant workers

Abstract

This paper shows that the individual’s bargaining power within the household, proxied by the gender and the educational attainment of the household head, affects how remittances sent by Overseas Filipino Workers are spent in the Philippines. Generalized linear model estimation and post-estimation tests reveal four main results. First, the gender of the household head, not of the remitter, matters in the allocation of remittances. Second, consistent with the existing literature on intrahousehold allocation, as remittances increase, female heads with absent spouses allocate more remittances to education and health and less remittances to alcohol and tobacco. Third, the presence of the wife matters in terms of the allocation of male heads to education, children’s clothing, and alcohol and tobacco. Fourth, regardless of the gender, household heads with less education allocate more to education than those with more education.

 JEL classification: D13, F22, J16, O15, R23