The Effect of IMF and World Bank Programmes on Poverty

Structural adjustment, as measured by the number of adjustment loans from the IMF and World Bank, reduces the growth elasticity of poverty reduction. Growth does reduce poverty, but the author find no evidence for a direct effect of structural adjustment on growth. Instead, the poor benefit less from output expansion in countries with many adjustment loans than in countries with few adjustment loans. By the same token, the poor suffer less from an output contraction in countries with many adjustment loans than in countries with few adjustment loans. [Discussion Paper No. 2001/102]