SENSA

Structural adjustment policies such as those being implemented in Honduras have tended to have disproportionately negative effects on the health and nutrition of poor people, particularly children. This report provides information on the Honduran poor for use in designing programs to alleviate the negative effects of structural adjustment. It measures and locates major geographic pockets of poverty and provides rough estimations of the number of people facing extreme poverty. Poverty is measured in terms of the ability to purchase a nutritionally adequate food basket. The report then examines the impact on poverty estimates of three different scenarios: stricter poverty criteria (to permit identification of those facing very extreme poverty), a 25% increase in agricultural wages, and an updated consumer price index. The major finding is that slightly over half of Hondurans face extreme poverty -- 74.4% in rural areas, 15.5% in Tegucigalpa, 9.3% in San Pedro Sula, and 16.6% in other urban areas. The report concludes that resources need to be focused on rural development activities, with some highly targeted urban assistance programs. An unbiased agricultural market informati

Source: DEC abstract, PN-ABG-214 (1990). This is the source's own text, not a cited summary of the documents.