Microfinance credit receipt and household expenditure in Indonesia: evidence from a 13-province household study

Using data from the 2024 National Socio-Economic Survey (Survei Sosial Ekonomi Nasional; SUSENAS) for 172,699 households across a 13-province Indonesian analytical domain, this study examines the relationship between microfinance-related credit receipt and expenditure-based material welfare. Credit receipt is defined as reported household receipt of credit from cooperatives, BUMDes, and/or PNM Mekaar during the previous 12 months. Inverse probability weighted regression adjustment estimates an Average Treatment Effect on the Treated (ATET) for log monthly household per-capita expenditure. The estimated ATET is −0.0806 log points (95% CI [−0.0999, −0.0612]; p < 0.001). The estimate is stable across alternative estimators, support restrictions, expenditure specifications, and province exclusions, but attenuates substantially when contemporaneous household economic-capacity measures are added, while hidden-selection diagnostics warrant further caution. Institutional estimates vary across credit sources, and a supplementary pooled interaction test indicates a more negative adjusted association in urban than rural households (Wald p < 0.001). These cross-sectional observational findings do not establish causal effects; rather, they show that credit access and higher expenditure-based material welfare are not synonymous and motivate institution-specific longitudinal evaluation.