Social safety nets and adjustment in developing countries

This paper argues that, although safety net programmes have had some notable successes, they are not the answer to the social impacts of adjustment, and should not serve to deflect efforts to refine adjustment programmes so that their social costs are better contained. Furthermore, because safety nets are increasingly portrayed as not merely short-term palliative measures, but as representing a potential alternative model for social service provisioning, the long-term impacts of this essentially residualist approach to social development should be more explicitely and thoroughly examined.