• Economic insecurity, staggering levels of inequality, declining social trust and social fragmentation are destabilising societies worldwide. 

• The World Social Report 2025, released by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), reveals trends that are threatening communities and demand immediate, decisive policy action.

• The world has seen extraordinary social and economic progress over the past three decades. Unprecedented gains in reducing extreme poverty and improvements in material well-being have demonstrated the transformative potential of collective action.

• Yet, societies across the world are facing deep challenges. Frustration with the status quo is fuelling distrust and straining the very foundations of global solidarity.

• Despite people living longer, being better educated and more connected than ever before, many believe that life today is worse than it was 50 years ago.

• This report reflects on the social achievements and lessons of the past and presents a way forward to deliver on the commitments made in the Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted in 1995, and accelerate the implementation of the broader set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

• The report calls for a new policy consensus anchored in three principles — equity, economic security for all, and solidarity — that are essential to strengthen the three dimensions of sustainable development.

World Social Report

The World Social Report is the flagship publication of the UN DESA on social development issues. It serves as a background document for discussion and policy analysis of socio-economic matters at the inter-governmental level. It identifies emerging social trends of global concern and analyses relationships among major development issues with international and national dimensions.

The 2025 report is the first to be co-produced with the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER). This collaboration brings new research insights into the report, particularly on the far-reaching impacts of inequality and declining trust.

An intensifying social crisis

• Despite significant gains in poverty reduction, many people teeter on the brink of poverty, even as they move up the income ladder. 

• Over 2.8 billion people — more than a third of the global population — live on $2.15 to $6.85 a day. Even a minor setback can push people into extreme poverty, and any reprieves are often temporary. 

• Employment precariousness is widespread, deepening economic uncertainties. Around 60 per cent of people globally are concerned about losing their jobs and being unable to find new ones. Even workers who may have expected to join a secure middle class, based on the path followed by the previous generation, find themselves struggling for economic stability.

• Informal employment remains the most prevalent form of labour market participation in low and middle-income countries. 

• Despite early expectations that it would decline and eventually disappear with economic growth and development, the share of informal employment has remained stagnant in African countries and declined only slightly in Asian and Latin American countries since 2010. 

• In many low and middle-income countries, jobs with no safety net remain  the norm, locking workers into cycles of low pay, instability, and zero benefits.

• At the same time, 65 per cent of the world’s population is living in countries where income inequality is growing. A large share of total income inequality can still be attributed to inequality based on characteristics such as race, caste, place of birth and family background. Without urgent action, leaving no one behind will remain a distant goal by 2030 unless progress accelerates.

• Climate change is also slowing the pace of poverty reduction and exacerbating inequality between countries and across generations. Globally, it is estimated that in 2019, the poorest 50 per cent of people accounted for only 12 per cent of global emissions yet they were exposed to 75 per cent of relative income losses due to climatic shocks.

Declining trust and weakening social cohesion

• Social cohesion – the strength of relationships and the sense of belonging and trust among members of a community and in their institutions – plays an important role in how people and social groups cooperate with one another, undertake collective action and maintain the rule of law.

• While there is no broadly agreed data framework to measure all dimensions of social cohesion across countries, the available evidence shows that trust in institutions has declined in most countries with data since the late 1990s.

• Currently, over half of the world’s people have little or no trust in their government. Trust has been declining from one 10-year birth cohort to the next, and is very low among people born in the 21st century, which signals a deepening erosion of confidence. Without action to prevent this generational decline, trust in government is likely to decline even further in coming decades.

• Trust between people is also low. Less than 30 per cent of the population in countries with data think that most people can be trusted. Increasingly, differences in opinion, preferences, values and beliefs lead to negative perceptions about other people’s moral values, their trustworthiness and their character. This deep lack of trust hinders cooperation and reduces civic engagement.

• The spread of misinformation and disinformation, facilitated by digital technologies, is reinforcing divisions and fuelling distrust. While digital platforms hold great potential to connect and inform people, they also allow the spread of disinformation, deceit and hate speech, often at a speed too fast to effectively counter. Social media has been leveraged to obstruct dialogue, incite violence, and stoke conflicts.

Policymaking through a social lens

• To reverse these damaging trends, the report calls for a bold shift in policymaking – one grounded in equity, economic security and solidarity.

• Sustained social progress requires a whole-of-government approach and the comprehensive policy framework outlined in the Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action. 

• Coherent and integrated policy solutions are needed to direct technological innovation, globalisation, demographic trends and other global transformations towards the goals of eradicating poverty, reducing inequality, promoting inclusion, supporting social cohesion and creating decent work. 

• Policy integration is also critical to ensure that climate action and the transition to green economies prioritise people in poverty and other disadvantaged groups, and help people build resilience against climate and other shocks. 

• In addition to advancing positive transformations, integrated approaches are required to avoid policies that aggravate the harmful effects of current trends.

• Policy interventions alone are not sufficient to hold societies together in environments of trust and cooperation. Economic, social, political and cultural institutions shape the quality of social relations and the extent of solidarity between people and among social groups.

• Governments and the international community have the power to chart a new course. In the Pact for the Future, in 2024, Member States committed to urgently accelerate progress towards achieving the SDGs, including through “concrete political steps and mobilising significant additional financing from all sources for sustainable development”.

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