The Demand for Microloans among Bangladeshi Street Vendors in New York City

New York has historically been a receiving city for immigrants from all over the world.  Vast and complex migrant networks span the city’s social and economic landscape.  The ebbs and flows in migration from different sending countries create new networks among recent migrants that grow and mature in the shadow of older, better established ones.  Within this variegated setting, the fastest growing immigrant population in the last two decades has been that from Bangladesh.  This paper constructs a demographic and economic profile of this population from the U.S. Census to provide a backdrop to the study of a small subset of this population, that of Bangladeshi street vendors.   Based on primary data collected by the authors, different economic decisions of this group are analyzed, such as the amount of remittances sent to Bangladesh, the amount of money  borrowed in Bangladesh to facilitate emigration and finally, the demand for small loans in the U.S. (from three to five thousand dollars)  A large variety of explaining factors are analyzed, such as current income, the amount of time lived in the U.S., whether or not they work as sub-contractors, household dependent-earner ratios, etc.   Preliminary results suggest that targeted micro-lending, an initiative taken by the Grameen Bank in New York City that is currently in its early and formative stage would have a significant and sound impact on the economic conditions of workers in these low wage jobs.