On March 2020, Wooyoung Lim and Sujata Visaria, two researchers from the Department of Economics at HKUST published a study explaining why Filipino domestic workers commonly finance their investments through loans rather than saving.
Their analysis of survey data and the records of a credit cooperative for migrant workers suggests that this cannot be explained by their inability to save, by financial illiteracy, a short time horizon or limited liability.
Instead, they speculate that the strict schedules and high interest rates of these loans create a disciplining effect that domestic workers find desirable.
Read here the complete study research
