• Adjustment does not necessarily increase poverty • Adjusting before a crisis reduces social costs • Refusal to adjust and the suspension of imports leads to self-centred underdevelopment, which is socially much more costly • The choice of macroeconomic stabilisation measures is important: the same result can be obtained with higher or lower social costs • Some structural adjustment measures have beneficial social effects but others, like the reorganisation of public enterprises, involve high costs • Action by donor countries is indispensable to offset the increase in poverty linked to stabilisation measures and to the reduction of employment in public enterprises
Series statement
OECD Development Centre Policy Briefs, 2077-1681 ; no.1