social spending however did not decline as a proportion of the budget in most countries as the political pressure to sustain civil service jobs and wages which account for the bulk of social expenditures was considerable in addition user fees introduced to cover the costs of complementary inputs for example books and medicines were viewed as serving not only to reduce the fiscal burden but also to improve the efficiency and quality of social service delivery although the remnants of the old policy provided limited job guarantees for that proportion of generally urban workers employed in government services or large modern enterprises the policy adjustments left most of the rural and urban poor with hardly any form of social protection new targeted social programmes were therefore introduced to protect the poor from the unfavourable macroeconomic environment the new programmes included social emergency and social investment funds that received financial support from the multilateral banks