Thirty years after the first World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, a new generation of social challenges demands a new kind of response. This paper, launched at the 2025 World Summit for Social Development in Doha, redefines how countries can achieve lasting prosperity in an age of climate volatility, debt pressures, and rapid technological change.

Drawing on new UNDP simulations across 126 developing countries, the paper finds that distribution-led growth could lift 411 million people above context-specific prosperity floors, while adaptive social protection could halve poverty volatility and reduce time spent in poverty by up to 0.9 percentage points per decade.