Chapter 4


 The negative effects on health and nutrition may be further compounded by the
 consequences of other adjustment policies, especially the real income decline which many
 poor households face under adjustment (see previous discussion).

3) Education policy

 If, under adjustment, the principles of cost recovery are applied to education, the real
 income effect on poor households will be the same as in the case of charges for health
 services. In general, this applies only at the secondary and tertiary educational levels, as
 the World Bank's policy explicitly excludes the introduction of charges for primary
 education.

 The policy of charging for higher level education may have rather longer-term negative
 effects on the welfare and food security of those households who refrain from sending
 their children to high school and forgo the chance of getting a qualified job with higher
 income at a later stage after graduation.

 Cuts in educational services may specifically affect female education, with negative
 implications for food security and nutrition, given the evidence of the importance of
 female education on child nutritional status.

 4) Industrial sector adjustment

 The impact of industrial sector adjustment on food security is mainly indirect, through its
 employment effects in the short term and the growth effects in the medium and long term.

 9. Assessing the Overall Impact of Adjustment Programmes on Food
 Security

 This review of the components of economic reform programmes and the analysis of their
 impact on the food economy and on food security has revealed the many linkages which
 exist among the various adjustment policies. These linkages apply to the objectives pursued,
 the instruments applied and their impacts on the factors determining food supply and
 demand. There are compounding and compensating effects, and, furthermore, substantial
 differences between the actual short- term effects, which have been rather negative in some
 cases, and the potential positive but uncertain long-term effects.

 A number of critical issues have been identified, and there is a wide range of potentially
 hazardous effects on those groups who were, from the outset, vulnerable to food insecurity,
 or on those who could become vulnerable during the reform process. Nevertheless, there is
 no inherent reason why macro-economic reform should be incompatible with food security.
 Box 4.8 shows how two Asian countries had quite different outcomes from the policy reform
 process. Much depends on the country-specific conditions, the characteristics of prevailing
 food deficits, on the policy package pursued and parameter changes induced, hence on the
 detailed way in which the broad objectives of reform are achieved. Therefore, valid
 conclusions on the overall impacts of adjustment programmes can only be drawn for
 country-specific cases, if at all.


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