Network Analysis of the Gender Gap in International Remittances by Migrants

Abstract

Financial inclusion is considered a key enabler of international development goals. Despite the expansion of financial access overall, the gender inequalities in basic access have remained consistent. This research investigates the predictive power of global remittance and migration flows on the gender gap in financial inclusion. First, singular value decomposition is applied to the World Bank’s 2017 Global Findex data to identify the financial inclusion variables that most contribute to the gender gap in financial inclusion. We find that indicators pertaining to account ownership, emergency funding, and receiving payments are especially significant. Based on the identified variables, a novel Financial Inclusion Gender Gap Score is calculated for 143 economies. The score is then incorporated into a complex network analysis of global remittance and migration networks. We analyze how network features such as node attributes, community membership, and bow-tie structure can be used to make inferences about the magnitude of a financial inclusion gender gap. Our findings suggest that weaker linkages in the network, characterized by lower node strength and peripheral positions in the bow-tie structure, are determinants of a notable financial inclusion gender gap. We also highlight communities in the remittance and migration networks with a more substantial gender imbalance, and discuss the the social- and cultural-leaning factors driving community formation in the migration network that seem to predicate a greater gap.