World Social Report 2025: Policy Consensus for Tackling Chaos

Substance use prevention must be a priority.

Economic insecurity, rising inequality, persistent distrust, and growing substance use are threatening the very fabric of societies worldwide. The World Social Report 2025 draws urgent attention to these issues, revealing an unsettling picture of communities under stress and the pressing need for a new policy consensus. By exploring why traditional policy approaches are failing and highlighting substance use as a complicating factor, the report calls for a bold, coordinated shift in priorities to restore social stability for everyone.

Why Societies Are Becoming More Fragmented

Today, more than 2.8 billion people live on just $2.15 to $6.85 a day. Even as global poverty rates have improved, millions remain on the brink, vulnerable to shocks like job loss, health crises, or rising living costs. The COVID-19 pandemic starkly revealed just how fragile social and economic safety nets have become. No matter the country, widespread feelings of insecurity have shaken people’s confidence in their future.

What’s driving this uncertainty? The report points to several converging factors:

Widespread employment insecurity. From gig workers in megacities to factory staff in declining industries, job uncertainty and income fluctuations leave many unsure how to plan for the next day, month, or year.
Declining trust in governments. Over half the world’s population now lacks trust in their leaders, with each new generation showing even less faith in institutions. This decline is often matched by policy paralysis and gridlock, halting progress on urgent issues.Policy gridlock has become the rule, not the exception, in many places. The anger and frustration from neglected communities boils over, blocking progress even as crises stack up—from cost-of-living spikes to climate-related disasters.
Diminished Legitimacy of Institutions: Trust isn’t just an abstract feeling; it’s foundational to how democratic states function. When governments fail to address increasing job insecurity or basic welfare, legitimacy crumbles. The steady decline of trade unions, especially in wealthier countries, signals the weakening of social contracts that depend on workplace representation and collective bargaining.
Stubborn and shifting inequality. While some gaps (like gender parity in education) are narrowing, others widen, especially among groups like refugees, the homeless, and those in informal settlements who remain “invisible” in official statistics
Social Backlash and the Spread of Misinformation: The report warns that lack of social support and increasing fragmentation fuel backlash, marked by political polarisation and the spread of misinformation or more accurately (and largely due to the above) a predilection for confirmation bias on any data in the public square. These conditions make it even harder for governments to build consensus or take swift action in times of crisis, particularly in governments have a history or record of lying or breaking promises to voting constituents. Compounding all of this, the rapid growth and acceleration of mis/disinformation (especially on social media) further erodes trust. We believe it was Mark Twain who said ‘a lie can travel half-way around the world before the truth has put its shoes on.’ People struggling with uncertainty or addiction are more susceptible to misleading information, which can influence health behaviour and hinder recovery or social reintegration.
Substance Use. Can be a correlate and manifest outcome of the above key issues, but increasingly substance use is becoming a causal factor in the growing fragmentation and cultural chaos.

Substance use is a powerful, often overlooked driver of instability in this complex landscape. Its impact stretches from the individual to the community level, deepening vulnerabilities and straining already weakened social bonds.

Increased Vulnerabilities and Social Isolation: Individuals struggling with alcohol and other drug use are more likely to face unemployment, insecure housing, and mental health challenges. This heightens their risk of chronic poverty and makes it harder to return to stability. For example, around 20% of people experiencing homelessness have a substance use disorder, showing just how tightly these issues are linked.

Breaking Down Community Cohesion: When substance use rises, trust between neighbours and within families can erode. People experiencing addiction often withdraw from social life, reducing their ability and willingness to participate in community efforts or solve shared problems. This loss of solidarity weakens the very resilience communities need to weather economic and social change.

Economic and Health Pressures: The burden substance use places on health systems, employers, and social services is vast. Globally, alcohol and drug misuse are responsible for millions of deaths each year, heavy healthcare costs, lost productivity, and mounting demands on welfare systems. These struggles stretch public resources thin, making effective policy action even more difficult.

Substance Use and Employment Insecurity: A Toxic Link

How Job Precarity Drives Substance Abuse

Unstable jobs and unpredictable incomes don’t just create stress; they directly increase the risk of substance use. Many turn to drugs or alcohol as a coping mechanism in the face of uncertainty, anxiety, or trauma. Workers in informal or non-standard jobs are especially vulnerable, as they often lack workplace protections or adequate support for mental health struggles.

Mental health risks elevate substance use: Anxiety and depression, both common companions of job insecurity, are closely linked to higher rates of substance abuse.
A cycle of instability: Once substance use takes hold, people often fall deeper into a web of job loss, social isolation, and declining wellbeing—with each challenge feeding the next.

Vulnerable Groups Most at Risk

Certain populations stand at the intersection of both job and substance-use vulnerability:

Informal sector workers: Without formal contracts, benefits, or legal protection, these workers are least able to access support or recover from setbacks.
Marginalised communities: Refugees, the precariously housed, and those outside mainstream data collection often slip through the cracks, becoming statistically invisible and under-supported.

Health, Education, and Social Mobility: Substance use isn’t an isolated concern. For children and young adults, it can disrupt education, limit opportunities, and set the stage for lifelong disadvantage. For families, its impacts ripple outwards, contributing to cycles of poverty, domestic instability, and violence.

The Cost to Public Services: The economic damage from substance use is measured not only in healthcare costs but also in lost productivity, increased crime rates, and the expansion of the criminal justice system. Resources directed toward addressing the consequences of substance use often mean less is available for investment in prevention, education, or community development.

Undermining Social Progress and Opportunity: Ultimately, substance use places additional barriers in front of those already struggling. It limits social mobility, increases exclusion, and undermines any progress made through poverty reduction or welfare policies. The knock-on effects are felt across generations and entire communities.

Principles for Real Change

The World Social Report 2025 argues that putting equity, economic security for all, and solidarity at the heart of policy is essential. This “new policy consensus” rejects the outdated focus on free markets, small governments, and efficiency for their own sake—instead making human well-being, reduced inequality, and community trust the overriding priorities.

However, it is imperative to include a caveat that all genres of social determinants of health and well-being are included in this endeavour.

The supply of opportunity and resources will only produce positive social outcomes with the capacity and agency of those being resourced and enabled to seek best-practice outcomes for them and their community in this. This must include the disengagement from aforementioned conducts (by all parties on the above issues) and a willingness to subscribe to collective narrative that looks for the betterment of my neighbour, not just the self. The individualistic aspiration for self-fulfilment that ignores others is as toxic as a coerced compliance with a manufactured consensus that undermines agency to do and become, including the undermining of initiative, innovation, proactive productivity and subsequent reward.

Key Policy Shifts Recommended (and suggested)

Investment in People and Social Protection
- Quality education for every age group and background.
- Equitable access to healthcare.
- Safe, affordable housing and clean energy.
Promotion of Decent Work
- Secure jobs with living wages and decent conditions for all workers.
- Social protections available at every career stage.
- Capacity of all industries and enterprises to protect itself from poor performance and failed productivity due to careless or inactive work practices (Suggestion)
Tackling Inequality Broadly
- Progressive tax and fiscal systems that wisely fund social spending, not just growth.
- Inclusive institutions that encourage participation, dialogue, and solidarity. (Suggestion – Absolute focus on empowering and ensuring equal opportunity for all, but not compelling the efficiency undermining of equality of outcome that further the community and nation lifting capacity of those institutions. Not the ineffectiveness, stagnation and demise of said institutions due to poor workplace practice and productivity enabled by poor workplace ethics and attitudes.
Stronger Global Cooperation
- Commitment from all countries to support each other in meeting global sustainability and social progress goals. (Suggestion – particularly in the area of drug policy, with no permission models allowed for substance use being normalised in communities)

The upcoming summit in Doha in November 2025 will provide a crucial platform for countries to share progress and commit to real action. With the insights and data from this new joint report from the United Nations and UNU-WIDER, the world has the evidence needed to drive genuine change.

This is more than a one-off event; it’s an opportunity to shape commitments that address the interlinked challenges of employment insecurity, substance use, inequality, and declining trust in societies everywhere. How this is achieved will require more than agreed upon mechanisms, but sustainable ethos and narratives behind such that do understand the human condition more fully and what is required for remedy of the growing dysfunction.

The World Social Report 2025 paints a challenging picture. Yet it also shows that with the right policy consensus, grounded in equity and solidarity, the world can recover social trust, tackle inequality, and reduce vulnerabilities—including those made worse by substance use. The upcoming global summit offers a turning point, but real change will require collective, consistent commitment well beyond any single gathering.

Source: World Social Report 2025: A New Policy Consensus to Accelerate Social Progress