The world economy is at a precarious moment. Heightened trade tensions, along with policy uncertainty, have significantly weakened the global economic outlook for 2025. Higher tariffs—resulting in a significant increase in the effective tariff rate in the United States of America—are likely to strain global supply chains, drive up production costs and delay critical investment decisions, while also contributing to financial market volatility. Global economic growth is now projected to slow to 2.4 per cent in 2025, down from 2.9 per cent in 2024, and 0.4 percentage points below the January forecast. The downward revisions in growth forecasts are broad-based, affecting both developed and…

This manual picks up where the previous manual in the series left off. The earlier manual, on the methodology of National Transfer Accounts (NTAs), shows how National Accounts data can be used to construct age profiles of economic production and consumption and to illustrate how resources flow from persons in age groups producing more than they consume to those in age groups producing less than they consume (United Nations, 2013). 

The NTA project calls this system of age-based transfers the “generational economy”. Uncovering and elucidating the role of such transfers has been the project’s major contribution. NTA research has revealed how countries have evolved various means…

Global economic growth is projected to remain at 2.8 per cent in 2025, unchanged from 2024, according to the United Nations flagship report, World Economic Situation and Prospects (WESP) 2025. While the global economy has demonstrated resilience, withstanding a series of mutually reinforcing shocks, growth remains below the pre-pandemic average of 3.2 per cent, constrained by weak investment, sluggish productivity growth, and high debt levels.

The report notes that lower inflation and ongoing monetary easing in many economies could provide a modest boost to global economic activity in 2025. However, uncertainty still looms large, with risks stemming from geopolitical conflicts,…

International Migration and Sustainable Development examines the linkages between international migration and the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. It discusses how international migration is defined and measured, examines levels and trends in international migration at the global and regional level and by income group, explores the growing scope and impact of international migration and reviews its relevance for achieving internationally agreed sustainable development Goals and targets. The report also offers policy recommendations focusing on the social, economic and environmental causes and consequences of…

According to the World Social Report 2024, urgent global action is needed to support national efforts to address the setbacks caused by the recent global crises, and to avoid the conversion of future shocks to crises.

Titled “Social Development in Times of Converging Crises: A Call for Global Action”, the World Social Report 2024 explains that, in our current global policy environment, shocks more readily turn into crises that cross boundaries, demanding international action.  Particularly as such crises disproportionately impact the most vulnerable people, societies and countries.

Crisis-driven setbacks in poverty reduction and unemployment

Successive shocks,…

The UN DESA Annual Highlights report is a tool to communicate the contributions of the Department to the realization of internationally agreed development goals and shared social, economic, and environmental aspirations. It showcases the Department’s role in gauging trends, building capacities, and shaping solutions. UN DESA Highlights 2023–2024 covers activities over the period of the 78th Session of the General Assembly (September 2023 – August 2024) and reflects the Department’s response to the set priorities and expressed needs of Member States. Seven (7) thematic chapters showcase how UN DESA put its expertise to the task of supporting Member State efforts to implement the 2030…

World Population Prospects 2024: Summary of Results adopts the analytical framework of the demographic transition—the historic shift towards longer lives and smaller families—approximated here by the timing at which populations peak in size, to explore differences in population trends that characterise countries and regions today and provide insight into their future trajectories. The report also offers policy recommendations to prepare countries for a population size, age structure and spatial distribution that may differ appreciably from that of their recent past. 

World Population Prospects 2024 is the twenty-eighth edition of the official United Nations population…

Global economic prospects have improved since January, with major economies avoiding a severe downturn, bringing down inflation without increasing unemployment. However, the outlook is only cautiously optimistic. Higher-for-longer interest rates, debt sustainability challenges, continuing geopolitical tensions and ever-worsening climate risks continue to pose challenges to growth, threatening decades of development gains, especially for least developed countries and small island developing States.

According to the World Economic Situation and Prospects as of mid-2024, the world economy is now projected to grow by 2.7 per cent in 2024 (+0.3 percentage points from the January…

The Handbook on the Least Developed Country Category contains comprehensive and authoritative information on criteria defining the category, graduation procedures, and international support measures for least developed countries (LDCs). This 5th edition reflects recent developments in the LDC category, including refinements to the LDC criteria and the progress of several countries towards graduation from the category. Moreover, it contains updated information on international support measures, including on “smooth transition” provisions for countries graduating from the LDC category. The Handbook, prepared by the Committee for Development Policy (CDP) and the UN Department of Economic…

This report, Thirty years after Cairo: Major trends, progress made and challenges ahead, gives a broad overview of global demographic trends since the International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo in 1994, and those foreseeable over the next 30 years. These include the continued yet slowing growth of the global population, its progressive ageing, and the increasing urbanization and scale of international migration. 

The report highlights the similarities and gradual convergence of demographic trends across major groups of countries, as well as the diversity of demographic situations among certain…

The world is facing a sustainable development crisis. The 2024 Financing for Sustainable Development Report: Financing for Development at a Crossroads finds that financing challenges are at the heart of the crisis and imperil the SDGs and climate action. The window to rescue the SDGs and prevent a climate catastrophe is still open but closing rapidly.

Financing gaps for sustainable development are large and growing – the estimates by international organizations and others are coalescing around $4 trillion additional investment needed annually for developing countries. This represents a more than 50% increase over the pre-pandemic estimates. Meanwhile, the finance divide has not…

Population Prospects of Countries in Special Situations provides an up-to-date overview of current and future major population trends in the LDCs, LLDCs and SIDS in connection with the opportunities and challenges these trends present for achieving sustainable development. This report highlights levels and trends in population size and distribution, mortality, fertility and international migration, including projections to 2050, for the 110 vulnerable countries or territories, while also discussing the implications of population change for achieving specific Sustainable Development Goals.