Structural Adjustment and Socioeconomic Inequality

Economic adjustment is a type of economic policy in which governments make reforms in the way of short-term planning in order to achieve the desired goals, which are liberalization, stabilization of goods, increasing productivity in the production sector, trade policies and wage contraction, etc. and apply long term. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for Latin American countries prescribed the adjustment policy in the 1970s, which was implemented in Iran after a few years. The International Monetary Fund defines adjustment policy as follows: ＂Structural adjustment is the program, policies and institutional changes necessary to transform the structure of an economy in such a way as to maintain balance of payments equilibrium in the medium term.＂ Only by implementing these policies, countries could benefit from loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Most of the countries implementing the adjustment policy other than Brazil failed and could not reach the desired goals.