Performance Monitoring in Education Remittances
Migrants sending remittances for education often lack visibility into whether recipients actually attend school or achieve satisfactory academic progress. Without transparent progress updates, senders cannot verify whether their financial contributions translate into real educational outcomes.
Picture this
Think of sponsoring a child through a charity where you receive official report cards and attendance sheets directly from the school. Instead of sending money blindly and relying on word of mouth, the educational institution provides verified student progress reports directly to the sponsor so they can confirm their investment is achieving its intended purpose.
What the evidence says
Direct payment with monitoring increased total remittances by 103.0 € over the no-label mean of 614.6 € (p < 0.01), but showed no statistically significant incremental gain over direct payment without monitoring (107.4 € vs 103.0 €, p = 0.4771).
- Who
- N = 501 Filipino migrant workers residing in Rome, Italy (73% female, median age 42, median monthly income 900 €).
- How
- Lab-in-the-field dictator game comparing remittance choices across nested control structures, specifically comparing direct school payments alone versus direct payments bundled with attendance and grade monitoring.
What to do
Provide automated grade and attendance monitoring features as optional add-ons rather than standalone requirements in remittance management services.
From the source
"Direct payment to school + monitoring results in 103.0 € total amount remitted over the mean for choice with no-labels of 614.6 €."
Directing remittances to education with soft and hard commitments: Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment and new product take-up among Filipino migrants in Rome