Ruchi Chopda of the Times of India reports on a recent discovery by Dean Yang and Ganesh Seshan: motivating migrants can help them save more, do it more collaboratively, and send more money to their families back home.
Yang and Seshan chose 200 migrant Indian men working in Doha, Qatar "from different age groups, educational backgrounds and professions," writes Chopda in "A Penny Saved Is a Penny Earned." They split the participants into test and control groups, then coordinated a motivational pep talk on saving for those in the test group.
KV Shamsudheen, a financial literacy consultant who focuses on the economic security of Indian expatriates and their family members back home, gave the three-hour motivational talk.
The findings? Migrants in the test group increased their savings by 34.5 percent, sent 13.2 percent more to their families back home, and made financial decisions in collaboration with their partners 30 percent more of the time.