Immigrants’ Gendered Remittance‐Sending Patterns and Purposes: The Role of Marital Status

Research on immigrant remittances and gender is dominated by qualitative studies focusing on specific groups of immigrants; meanwhile, quantitative analysis is scarce due to data limitations. Drawing on the Study on International Money Transfers, a rare survey dataset on remittance behaviours, we compare how immigrant women and men in Canada send money abroad, with a focus on how gender intersects with marital status. We find that married immigrants make some joint decisions regarding remittances. At the same time, there are notable differences in the purpose of remitting across gender and marital status. Married immigrant women appear to use their remittances to express kinship love, more so than married men. Meanwhile, unmarried men remit larger sums than unmarried women, possibly due to cultural pressures. Furthermore, unmarried immigrant women invest more frequently in healthcare expenses, pointing to their potential role as transnational caretakers for the health of families left behind.