This paper explores the relation between economic growth and poverty, and develops the methodology to measure separately the impact of changes in average inccome and income inequality on poverty. This decomposition provides a link between macro economic adjustment policies and poverty which is discussed in the context of the adjustment experience of Cote d'Ivoire. The issue of targeting a poverty alleviation budget is shown to be related to the poverty decomposition proposed in the paper. The methodology proposed is applied to the data taken from the 1985 Living Standards Survey in Cote d'Ivoire.