The research team (The World Bank) has considered findings of some previous relevant studies in order to explore the potential of mobile banking technology to facilitate risk sharing and insurance in Bangladesh. The study team collaborated with Gana Unnayan Kendra (GUK) to train garment workers and match them for jobs in Dhaka. A sample of GUK-affiliated workers was provided with mobile banking accounts to evaluate whether the technology could help improve their resource delivery capabilities, especially to families in rural Bangladesh through the pre-harvest seasonal famine season (Monga). For designing the project, the team has analyzed and comprehended ideas on data of some survey findings with significance showing evidence that providing access to bKash allows migrants from Dhaka to send money to their very poor households in rural Bangladesh, which increases remittance flows by 26%, and helps in decreasing extreme poverty along with increasing consumption by 7% in the rural areas. Additionally, it helps make things better during the lean season.
The team has executed its’ plan to explore the feasibility of conducting an external validity experiment in Bangladesh to test whether the results of the same intervention apply to other migration corridors. To do this, firstly they identified five potential migration corridors with different migration densities in Bangladesh which includes Dhaka-Magura, Dhaka-Noakhali, Dhaka-Kishoregonj, Chittagong-Rangamati, and Dhaka-Pirojpur and investigated ways of reaching out to these migrant households. dRi supported the World Bank (WB) with the long-run follow up study as well as an external validity study for an RCT in Bangladesh to understand how facilitating transfers through a mobile money platform (bKash) affects the resilience of recipient household members’ through the difficult famine season in Bangladesh.
Serial No: 243
Theme: Migration and Human Rights
Research Method: Quantitative
Partner: New York University
Starting Year: 2022
Study Area: Dhaka-Magura, Dhaka- Noakhali, Dhaka- Kishoreganj, Chittagong- Rangamati and Dhaka- Pirojpur
