Where every figure came from
World Bank, World Development Indicators: GDP growth (annual %), NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG (Output in 1998 and the chart): https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG. CC BY 4.0, credit World Bank. Data last updated 13 July 2026. Real GDP growth, per cent: Indonesia 1990 7.2, 1991 6.9, 1992 6.5, 1993 6.5, 1994 7.5, 1995 8.2, 1996 7.8, 1997 4.7, 1998 -13.1 (the chart rounds each year to a whole number). 1998: Thailand -7.6, Malaysia -7.4, South Korea -4.9, Philippines a fall of under one per cent. The IMF evaluation office, on data available in 2003, gives Korea's 1998 fall as 6.7 per cent; the World Bank's current figure is smaller. Indonesia 1990-2001 retrieved 3 October 2026 from the World Bank API; the other countries, and Indonesia 1995-2001, retrieved 1 October 2026; values checked equal.
IMF Independent Evaluation Office, The IMF and Recent Capital Account Crises: Indonesia, Korea, Brazil (2003) (Forecasts against outcomes, the damage to firms and banks, the later judgement on the budgets): http://www.imf.org/external/np/ieo/2003/cac/pdf/all.pdf. IMF copyright; paraphrased. Page numbers are the printed page numbers. Executive summary, p. 2: Korea's downturn was severe and greater than expected, reflecting effects on balance sheets that were clearly underestimated; with hindsight the fiscal tightening in Korea's programme was unnecessary, as IMF staff themselves concluded; Indonesia's crisis was the most severe of the three reviewed, with a large increase in poverty. P. 3: the stance of monetary policy in all three cases reviewed (Indonesia, Korea, Brazil) was initially set tight, the programmes openly weighing dearer money against a weaker currency (the sentence runs onto p. 4). The fiscal tightening was mild in Indonesia and Korea; given what happened to output it was not warranted, and it was relaxed quickly once the collapse in output became evident; in neither country was it the cause of the output collapse, which came from balance sheet effects not factored into programme design. P. 4: in Indonesia the tight monetary policy envisaged was not implemented; Korea implemented it, raising interest rates; bank restructuring had a contractionary effect on the flow of credit. Chapter 4, p. 30: the November 1997 programme projected Indonesian growth of three per cent in 1998/99, revised to zero in January 1998; the currency collapse badly damaged the balance sheets of firms and banks; Indonesian fixed investment, expected to fall by under half a per cent, fell by about a third in 1998/99; Korea's programme projected growth of 2.5 per cent for 1998; Korean investment, projected to fall by 14.2 per cent, fell by 21.2 per cent, again showing the damage to balance sheets was underestimated. P. 31: at the time most economists, inside and outside the IMF, did not yet use analysis of balance sheets. P. 32: Korea's first programme had a small fiscal surplus for 1998. In Korea, as early as late December 1997, staff recommended that the authorities not keep to the fiscal targets but let automatic stabilizers work; the authorities were reluctant to depart from their balanced-budget approach despite the staff's urging; the fiscal targets in both countries were adjusted quickly as the contraction became evident. P. 33: some critics argued that the tight budgets were unnecessary and partly responsible for the output collapse; the office's evaluation is that the initial tightening may have been misguided but the severe contraction came from other forces, linked to balance sheet effects and confidence, which were clearly underestimated. Read from the Internet Archive capture of the original file, https://web.archive.org/web/20050315024854id_/http://www.imf.org/external/np/ieo/2003/cac/pdf/all.pdf (capture 2005-03-15). Retrieved 1 October 2026.
US Congressional Research Service, Asian Financial Crisis and Recovery: Status and Implications for U.S. Interests, RL30517 (6 April 2000) (Poverty, living standards, city and countryside): https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL30517.html. Public domain (US government work). Section "Deep Social and Political Impact" (p. CRS-3, continued on CRS-4): the contraction imposed a harsh social cost; in general it hurt the urban poor and middle classes more than people in rural areas; because world prices set the value of many cash crops, the devaluations tended to raise farmers' incomes relative to city workers'; many urban workers in South-East Asia went back, at least for a time, to their home villages, which South Korean workers generally could not do; South Korea could set up unemployment benefits and other relief fairly quickly, while Thailand and Indonesia lacked the means and the administration to give much support. Section "Serious Impact on Living Standards" (p. CRS-4): incomes in the crisis countries now appear not to have fallen as much as first estimated, but the social impact was serious in every affected country; citing World Bank estimates: in South Korea urban poverty more than doubled, from 8.6 per cent in 1997 to 19.2 per cent in 1998; in Indonesia the share below the national poverty line nearly doubled, from 11.0 per cent before the crisis to 19.9 per cent after, and the overall standard of living fell by 24.4 per cent; a severe drought hit rural West Java and other parts of Indonesia in 1997 and early 1998 and caused widespread hunger; in Thailand the crash mainly affected the urban middle classes and national poverty rose only moderately. Read from EveryCRSReport.com; no Internet Archive capture of the official crsreports.congress.gov copy exists (checked 2 Oct 2026). Retrieved 1 October 2026.
IMF, The IMF's Response to the Asian Crisis: A Factsheet (17 January 1999), Boxes 2, 3 and 4 (How the programmes were changed during 1998): http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/asia.pdf. IMF copyright; paraphrased. Page numbers are those printed in the PDF. Box 2, Thailand: the first programme aimed to turn the public sector deficit into a surplus of about one per cent of GDP in 1997/98 (p. 3); the letter of 24 February 1998 moved the target to a deficit, given weaker activity, partly to pay for more social spending, while keeping a tight monetary stance to support the exchange rate (p. 3); the letter of 26 May 1998 allowed further cautious cuts in interest rates and raised the deficit target to 3 per cent of GDP, to limit any further decline of the economy (p. 4); the letter of 1 December 1998 raised the deficit target for 1998/99 to 5 per cent of GDP, to support domestic demand through investment projects and the social safety net (p. 5). Box 3, Indonesia: after social disturbances and political change in May, the memorandum of 24 June 1998 gave high priority to the social safety net and set social spending at 7.5 per cent of GDP, including subsidies for food, fuel and medical care to be phased out once the economy improved, job-creating programmes supported by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and other donors, and aid to students (p. 8). Box 4, Korea: the first programme assumed growth of 2.5 per cent in 1998 (p. 13); the letter of 7 February 1998 targeted a deficit of around one per cent of GDP for 1998, and the letters of 2 May and 24 July 1998 allowed larger deficits of about two and about five per cent of GDP, as the outlook weakened and the recession deepened, mainly through automatic stabilizers, with wider unemployment insurance and more social spending (pp. 14-15). Read from the Internet Archive capture of the original file, https://web.archive.org/web/20000818041550id_/http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/asia.pdf (capture 2000-08-18). Retrieved 1 October 2026.
All wording is our own. Charts are drawn from the data named under them.