Adjustment and social funds: political panacea or effective poverty reduction?

In the latter part of the 1980s, a number of countries introduced schemes, with donor support, aimed at offsetting the rising poverty which had accompanied their adjustment programmes. These took a variety of forms and have variously been referred to as ‘emergency social funds’ or ‘social investment funds’, respectively in Bolivia and Honduras and as a ‘social recovery fund’ (in Zambia). This chapter will review these initiatives in selected countries, referring to them generically as social funds (SFs).