Growth, redistribution and fight against poverty: the non-linear evolution of the approach of the World Bank

This article reviews sixty years of the activity of the World Bank, by stressing the variations over time of its attitude with regard to the fight against poverty. Indeed, during the 1950s and 1960s, the World Bank considered that the best means of fighting poverty consisted in creating the conditions of the fastest possible growth by carrying out heavy investments in physical infrastructures. However, faced with the persistence of mass poverty and high inequalities in a great number of developing countries despite rather satisfactory performances in terms of growth, at the end of the 1960s the World Bank put for the first time the a war against poverty ", at the centre of its agenda. Then during the 1970s it endeavoured to work out new growth strategies which are more favourable for the poor. Under the era of structural adjustment, the vision of the World Bank changed in many respects. During the first half of the 1980s, in a context of the debt crisis, the World Batik was led to put aside the objective of poverty reduction to favour the recovery of macroeconomic balances and the potential of growth of countries in difficulty. However, in response to criticism concerning the social costs of its adjustment programs, the international financial institution, at the end of the 1980s, reaffirmed its commitment to reduce poverty by giving greater importance to the social effects of short-term adjustment and proposing afterwards new strategies towards long-term poverty reduction.