Labeled remittances: a field experiment among Filipino migrant workers in the UAE

We conducted a randomized experiment of the impact of remittance labeling among Filipino migrant workers in the UAE. The ability to label remittances with the migrant’s intended uses leads migrants with low levels of baseline (pre-treatment) remittances to increase their remittance levels. There is no effect of labeling for migrants with initially higher remittance levels. We also examined impacts of remittance labeling on household expenditures in treated migrants’ remittance-recipient households in the Philippines. The labeling treatment does not lead to higher expenditures on uses that migrants report as priority items (in the full sample or in subsamples split by baseline remittances). There is only weak or mixed evidence that labeling leads to actual changes in household expenditures towards the purposes preferred by migrants.