Impact of social factors on loan delinquency in microfinance

Abstract: This paper develops multistate models to analyse loan delinquency in the microfinance sector, using data from Ghana. The models are designed to account for both partial repayments and the short repayment durations typical in microfinance, focusing on estimating the probability of transitions between two or three repayment states, including delinquency. Social variables, such as religious and cultural factors, were found to play a statistically significant role in influencing repayment behavior, highlighting the impact of societal dynamics on financial outcomes. We explored both time-independent and time-dependent frailty models to capture unobserved heterogeneity. Overall, the findings emphasize the importance of social factors in delinquency but suggest limited predictive gains from incorporating frailties into multistate models.