The Impact of IMF Economic Policies on Poverty Reduction in Low-Income Countries

摘要

This paper has shown that a higher level of income is found to be the most powerful tool to achieve higher educational and health standards. Moreover, this paper has demonstrated that public educational and health care expenditures do contribute to improving education and health outcomes, but their impacts to date are somewhat limited. This could reflect that the allocations of public expenditure toward education and health are small relative to current and infrastructure expenditures, so their amounts are not sufficient to exert any discernable impacts on social outcomes. Also, this could be attributable to the institutionalized neglect of the poor, inefficient use of funds, mismanagement of public funds, and bureaucratic incapability. In particular, the lack of special care for the poor, youth, and females would work against improving overall social outcomes, which are closely linked to poverty and inequality. This paper also demonstrated that more attention is needed to the political risk environment surrounding a country, since this environment provides the preconditions for improving social outcomes. A better political/social risk environment could raise per capita income through realizing the better use of a country's endowment.