Economic Reform and Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Brief Statistical Sketch

Abstract

The international debt crisis ofthe 1980s forced countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to reform economic poJicies. Because the primary purpose of these reforms was to enable the region's economies to service the debts owed to banks.in industrialized nations, there was concern that these reforms would increase the incidence of poverty. To measure the impact on the incidence of poverty of two of these reforms, fiscal discipline and export promotion, two simple regression models were constructed. Results of these regressions indicated that fiscal discipline and export promotion are associated with reduction in the incidence of poverty. (132, 019)