The main task of CEPED, the French Center on Population and Development, is to deal with the relations between population and development. The center in this paper questions the nature of the demographic consequences of adjustment policy and reforms in developing countries. There is no doubt that such policies had important social consequences. The dearth of available statistical data, however, makes it difficult and even pointless to try and dissociate the effects of adjustment policies from the economic crises which put them in place. CEPED asked a group of experts to offer their views on to what extent the global economic crisis and the structural adjustment policies effected during the early 1980s affected demographic trends over the long term in sub-Saharan Africa. Whatever effects the economic crisis and the structural adjustment policies had upon the continent will remain to be felt for years to come. Further research is therefore warranted.