This study analyses the impact which recessionary conditions have had in Chile on a particularly vulnerable age group: children and the young. In addition to the external crisis, Chile experienced serious imbalances in the form of inflation and balance-of-payments deficits in the early 1970s. Social development experts have long recommended the application of selective policies to ‘target groups’ whose situation is especially vulnerable to economic fluctuations. During the early 1970s, Chile implemented policies specifically designed to improve the situation of children, especially in terms of mother and child care, and programmes were undertaken to combat infant undernutrition. This paper evaluates the success of these programmes in counteracting the negative effects of the recession and the recessionary adjustment policies.