Answers have proved hard to come by. Government statistics on poverty and unemployment, let alone on such indicators as school enrolment and child mortality, take time to collect and process almost everywhere in Asia. Pending reliable data, analysis of the social impacts has remained speculative, or based on small data samples from particular (mainly urban) locations.

As the political atmosphere became more highly charged during 1998, however, the region's governments felt compelled to act. In addition, the multilateral development agencies felt obliged to intervene to alleviate the human suffering which the crisis was alleged to be causing. They, too, were reeling from intense international criticism that they had neither predicted the crisis nor managed to come up with appropriate policy interventions once it had erupted.

In late 1998, ambitious 'social safety net' programmes were drawn up and implemented in Indonesia and Thailand, though it was far from clear who, and where, the worst affected people were, and what (if anything) could or should be done to ease their plight. Even as these programmes were being implemented, often with substantial support from external donors, doubts were being raised about initial estimates of the impact of the crisis on poverty. In the Indonesian case, where by common consent the impact of crisis has been most severe, it now appears that some of the very grim predictions voiced in late 1998 about the impact of the crisis on poverty were, in fact, exaggerated.

At macroeconomic level, the signs are that decline in the consumption component of GDP has been less than the decline in total GDP, with investment expenditures falling far more rapidly. It is also apparent that decline in household income and expenditure has varied widely depending on region and social class:

• many urban middle class families saw their incomes cut back

Other related links:
Search Eldis for sources on the Asian crisis