The World Problems Index — Ranked in Five Measures

Warming driven by greenhouse gas emissions is raising mortality, displacement and economic damage across every region.

Deaths

250 thousand

(per year (projected))

Impacted

3.3 billion

Cost

$1.4 trillion

Trend

Worsening

The largest interstate war in Europe since 1945, with mass casualties, displacement and global food and energy shocks.

Deaths

1 million

(since Feb 2022)

Impacted

44 million

Cost

$600 billion

Trend

Worsening

Fine particulate and ozone pollution is one of the largest single killers on earth, concentrated in Asia and Africa.

Deaths

6.7 million

(per year)

Impacted

9 billion

Cost

$8.1 trillion

Trend

Steady

Hundreds of millions face chronic undernourishment; tens of millions face emergency or famine conditions.

Deaths

9 million

(per year)

Impacted

733 million

Cost

$3.5 trillion

Trend

Worsening

Extreme heat is a widespread and escalating global health, economic, and environmental hazard. The supplied evidence documents substantial mortality, lost labor productivity, health costs, and agricultural losses, with impacts expected to worsen as temperatures rise.

Deaths

10 thousand

Impacted

—

Cost

$16 trillion

Trend

Steady

Retrospective estimates attribute millions of deaths, tens of millions displaced and trillions spent to post-9/11 wars.

Deaths

—

Impacted

—

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

Intense urban warfare has killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly the whole population of the Gaza Strip.

Deaths

75 thousand

(since Oct 2023)

Impacted

2.2 million

Cost

$50 billion

Trend

Worsening

Fighting between the army and the RSF has produced the world's largest displacement and hunger crisis.

Deaths

200 thousand

(since Apr 2023)

Impacted

34 million

Cost

$30 billion

Trend

Worsening

Drought is a widespread, recurrent hazard that causes water shortages, crop failures, hunger, livelihood losses and ecosystem degradation. The supplied evidence indicates very high historical mortality and substantial economic harm, although it does not establish a single global event total or current-year estimate.

Deaths

—

Impacted

55 million

Cost

$249 billion

Trend

Steady

Reliance on polluting fuels and inefficient stoves exposes more than two billion people to household air pollution, causing an estimated 2.9 million deaths annually and imposing major health, productivity, and climate costs.

Deaths

2.9 million

Impacted

2 billion

Cost

$2.4 trillion

Trend

Steady

Drug-resistant infections already kill more than HIV or malaria and are projected to accelerate sharply.

Deaths

1.3 million

(per year)

Impacted

9 billion

Cost

$1 trillion

Trend

Worsening

A global health-system failure in which an estimated 5 billion people lack access to safe, timely, and affordable surgical and anesthesia care, causing substantial preventable mortality, catastrophic household spending, and long-term productivity losses.

Deaths

1.5 million

Impacted

5 billion

Cost

$12 trillion

Trend

Steady

Decades of overlapping armed conflict in a mineral-rich region, with mass displacement and one of the highest excess-death tolls of the modern era.

Deaths

6 million

(since 1996)

Impacted

25 million

Cost

$30 billion

Trend

Worsening

Billions lack safely managed water or sanitation, driving preventable disease deaths concentrated in children.

Deaths

1.4 million

(per year)

Impacted

3.5 billion

Cost

$260 billion

Trend

Improving

Road crashes are the leading killer of young people worldwide and a top-ten cause of death overall.

Deaths

1.2 million

(per year)

Impacted

50 million

Cost

$1.8 trillion

Trend

Steady

Lead exposure is a widespread global health and environmental problem that can cause irreversible neurological injury, cardiovascular and other disease, premature death, and substantial lifetime productivity losses, especially among children.

Deaths

3.5 million

Impacted

18 thousand

Cost

$906 billion

Trend

Steady

More than 700,000 people die by suicide each year and a billion live with a mental health condition.

Deaths

727 thousand

(per year)

Impacted

970 million

Cost

$1 trillion

Trend

Worsening

Years of war have left over half the population needing aid, with famine risk and collapsed health services.

Deaths

377 thousand

(since 2014)

Impacted

22 million

Cost

$126 billion

Trend

Worsening

The single largest killer of humans, and largely preventable.

Deaths

20 million

(per year)

Impacted

600 million

Cost

$1 trillion

Trend

Worsening

Fourteen years of war left a shattered state, mass displacement and a stalled recovery.

Deaths

600 thousand

(since 2011)

Impacted

17 million

Cost

$400 billion

Trend

Steady

The widespread availability and illicit proliferation of small arms and light weapons fuels homicide, armed conflict, insecurity, displacement, and barriers to development worldwide. The cited evidence reports 260,000 small-arms deaths in 2021, representing 45% of violent deaths that year.

Deaths

260 thousand

Impacted

—

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

Hundreds of millions of people live below the level the sea is heading for.

Deaths

—

Impacted

14 million

Cost

$14 trillion

Trend

Worsening

The second largest cause of death worldwide, rising as populations age and screening lags in poorer countries.

Deaths

9.7 million

(per year)

Impacted

20 million

Cost

$1.2 trillion

Trend

Worsening

A metabolic epidemic reshaping health systems in every income bracket.

Deaths

3.4 million

(per year)

Impacted

1.8 billion

Cost

$1 trillion

Trend

Worsening

A neurotoxin still circulating in paint, cookware, batteries and spices, costing children measurable IQ.

Deaths

1.5 million

(per year)

Impacted

800 million

Cost

$6 trillion

Trend

Steady

Insufficient development and commercialization of new antibiotics is weakening the ability to treat drug-resistant bacterial infections. The supplied evidence indicates a substantial current health and economic burden from antimicrobial resistance and warns of much larger future losses if effective antibiotics remain unavailable.

Deaths

4.7 million

Impacted

—

Cost

$4.6 billion

Trend

Steady

Invasive alien species are a global environmental and economic threat that damages biodiversity, agriculture, infrastructure, and human well-being. The supplied evidence indicates very large and rising costs, including an estimated $423 billion annually worldwide.

Deaths

—

Impacted

—

Cost

$423 billion

Trend

Steady

Political violence, flooding and economic collapse in the world youngest country.

Deaths

1.7 thousand

(since 2013)

Impacted

7.8 million

Cost

—

Trend

Worsening

The largest preventable cause of death on earth.

Deaths

8 million

(per year)

Impacted

1.3 billion

Cost

$1.4 trillion

Trend

Improving

Fire seasons are lengthening and burning places that historically did not burn.

Deaths

300 thousand

(per year)

Impacted

400 million

Cost

$150 billion

Trend

Worsening

Over 120 million people have been forced from their homes, the highest number ever recorded.

Deaths

—

Impacted

122 million

Cost

$400 billion

Trend

Worsening

A global public-health and nutrition problem in which children experience impaired growth from chronic undernutrition (stunting) or dangerously low weight for height from acute undernutrition (wasting), increasing illness, developmental harm, and mortality risk.

Deaths

2.7 million

Impacted

194 million

Cost

$135 billion

Trend

Steady

Storms are intensifying faster and carrying more water than the infrastructure was built for.

Deaths

15 thousand

(per year)

Impacted

700 million

Cost

$150 billion

Trend

Worsening

Healthcare-associated infections are a major global patient-safety and public-health problem, causing millions of infections, substantial mortality, prolonged hospitalization, and large recurring healthcare and productivity costs.

Deaths

500 thousand

Impacted

4.8 million

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

Industrial chemicals that do not break down are now in almost every human bloodstream.

Deaths

—

Impacted

4 billion

Cost

$8 billion

Trend

Worsening

Disputes over shared rivers, aquifers, and other cross-border water resources threaten water security, agriculture, energy, ecosystems, livelihoods, and interstate stability. Climate change and growing demand may intensify scarcity and tensions across basins supporting much of the global population.

Deaths

—

Impacted

1.8 billion

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

Forest loss continues at millions of hectares per year, undermining climate stability, water cycles and food systems.

Deaths

—

Impacted

1.6 billion

Cost

$600 billion

Trend

Worsening

Aquifers that took millennia to fill are being drained within a lifetime.

Deaths

—

Impacted

2 billion

Cost

$700 billion

Trend

Worsening

Assessments report 16,607 disaster deaths, 110.2 million people affected and roughly $224 billion in worldwide damage during 2025.

Deaths

17 thousand

Impacted

110 million

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

Fighting in Amhara and Oromia continues after the Tigray war, with severe humanitarian consequences.

Deaths

600 thousand

(2020-2022)

Impacted

21 million

Cost

—

Trend

Worsening

Cooking on solid fuel kills millions, almost entirely women and children.

Deaths

3.2 million

(per year)

Impacted

2.1 billion

Cost

—

Trend

Improving

A nationwide armed resistance to military rule has produced mass displacement, airstrikes on civilians and economic collapse.

Deaths

75 thousand

(since 2021)

Impacted

19 million

Cost

$20 billion

Trend

Worsening

Tsunamis are infrequent but potentially catastrophic coastal disasters that can cause mass mortality, widespread displacement, infrastructure destruction, environmental damage, and major economic losses.

Deaths

252 thousand

Impacted

—

Cost

$280 billion

Trend

Steady

A third of the world topsoil is degraded and it forms far slower than it is lost.

Deaths

—

Impacted

3.2 billion

Cost

$400 billion

Trend

Worsening

Around seven hundred million people live on less than the international poverty line.

Deaths

—

Impacted

700 million

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

Jihadist insurgency and state collapse across Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have made the Sahel the global epicentre of terrorism deaths.

Deaths

7.6 thousand

(since 2012)

Impacted

1 million

Cost

$15 billion

Trend

Worsening

The most widespread human rights violation in the world, and among the least prosecuted.

Deaths

50 thousand

(per year)

Impacted

736 million

Cost

$1.5 trillion

Trend

Steady

Synthetic opioids have driven the deadliest drug epidemic in recorded history, concentrated in North America.

Deaths

110 thousand

(per year (peak))

Impacted

50 million

Cost

$1.5 trillion

Trend

Improving

Insurgency in the northeast and armed banditry in the northwest have displaced millions.

Deaths

120 thousand

(since 2009)

Impacted

25 million

Cost

—

Trend

Worsening

The deadliest infectious disease in the world, curable but persistently underfunded.

Deaths

1.3 million

(per year)

Impacted

11 million

Cost

$50 billion

Trend

Improving

A preventable mosquito-borne disease that still kills a child roughly every minute.

Deaths

600 thousand

(per year)

Impacted

263 million

Cost

$12 billion

Trend

Steady

Lung disease driven by smoke, dust and polluted air, concentrated in the poorest households.

Deaths

4 million

(per year)

Impacted

545 million

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

Post-peace-deal fragmentation has left armed groups controlling large rural areas.

Deaths

450 thousand

(since 1985)

Impacted

9 million

Cost

—

Trend

Worsening

Religious persecution is a global human-rights and humanitarian problem involving discrimination, repression, violence, and killings based on religious identity or belief. The supplied evidence focuses primarily on Christians and reports hundreds of millions facing high levels of persecution or discrimination.

Deaths

5 thousand

Impacted

365 million

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

Roughly 50 million people live in forced labour or forced marriage, embedded in global supply chains.

Deaths

—

Impacted

50 million

Cost

$150 billion

Trend

Worsening

The U.S.-Iran conflict has killed thousands and damaged U.S. military bases across the Middle East, indicating sustained regional escalation.

Deaths

3.7 thousand

Impacted

—

Cost

—

Trend

Worsening

Deaths, violence and disease from a substance most societies treat as unremarkable.

Deaths

2.6 million

(per year)

Impacted

400 million

Cost

$800 billion

Trend

Steady

Insurgency, clan conflict and repeated drought compound one of the worst humanitarian situations on earth.

Deaths

2.9 thousand

(past decade)

Impacted

6.9 million

Cost

—

Trend

Worsening

Armed gangs control most of the capital amid state failure, hunger and mass displacement.

Deaths

12 thousand

(per year)

Impacted

5.5 million

Cost

$5 billion

Trend

Worsening

One of the highest absolute homicide counts in the world outside a declared war.

Deaths

30 thousand

(per year)

Impacted

115 thousand

Cost

$13 billion

Trend

Steady

A treatable pandemic that still kills hundreds of thousands a year because treatment reaches unevenly.

Deaths

630 thousand

(per year)

Impacted

40 million

Cost

$20 billion

Trend

Improving

A third of global fish stocks are harvested beyond biological limits.

Deaths

—

Impacted

600 million

Cost

$80 billion

Trend

Worsening

Most children in poor countries cannot read a simple story by age ten.

Deaths

—

Impacted

500 million

Cost

$21 trillion

Trend

Worsening

Shelter has become unaffordable across most of the urban world.

Deaths

—

Impacted

1.1 billion

Cost

$4 billion

Trend

Worsening

The largest displacement crisis in the Western Hemisphere.

Deaths

—

Impacted

19 million

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

Oil spills contaminate marine and coastal ecosystems, while routine gas flaring releases climate-warming gases and harmful air pollutants. The supplied evidence documents substantial health burdens from U.S. flaring and broader ecological and socioeconomic harm, but does not establish a unified global toll.

Deaths

710

Impacted

500 thousand

Cost

$7.3 billion

Trend

Steady

A persistent global conflict-remnant threat that kills and injures civilians, restricts land use and livelihoods, impedes refugee return, and slows post-conflict recovery across dozens of contaminated countries.

Deaths

—

Impacted

6.3 thousand

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

A curable and preventable infection that still kills more people than malaria.

Deaths

1.3 million

(per year)

Impacted

300 million

Cost

—

Trend

Worsening

A nuclear-armed standoff alongside one of the most severe closed-country humanitarian situations.

Deaths

—

Impacted

10 million

Cost

—

Trend

Worsening

Organized criminal operations, concentrated in Southeast Asia but transnational in reach, traffic and coerce people into conducting online fraud, often alongside detention, violence and sexual exploitation.

Deaths

—

Impacted

300 thousand

Cost

$10 billion

Trend

Steady

Drowning is a major global, preventable cause of injury death, disproportionately affecting low- and middle-income countries and imposing substantial social and economic costs.

Deaths

300 thousand

Impacted

856 thousand

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

Violence against hospitals, health workers, patients, and medical transport disrupts essential care in conflicts and emergencies. The supplied evidence reports hundreds to more than a thousand attacks annually and substantial direct casualties, but does not establish a comprehensive global impact or attributable economic cost.

Deaths

115

Impacted

—

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

A carbon store twice the size of the atmosphere is beginning to release.

Deaths

—

Impacted

5 million

Cost

$70 billion

Trend

Worsening

Somalia's hunger emergency is deepening, with 1.48 million people projected to face Emergency-level food insecurity.

Deaths

—

Impacted

6.5 million

Cost

—

Trend

Worsening

The legal or quasi-legal reduction of tax liabilities through loopholes and cross-border arrangements erodes public revenue, can weaken public services, and may worsen inequality worldwide.

Deaths

—

Impacted

—

Cost

$550 billion

Trend

Steady

Arms control has collapsed while nuclear arsenals modernise, creating the highest escalation risk in decades.

Deaths

0

(potential)

Impacted

8 billion

Cost

$0

Trend

Worsening

A group of disabling infections affecting more than a billion people and attracting little funding.

Deaths

200 thousand

(per year)

Impacted

1.6 billion

Cost

—

Trend

Improving

Twelve million girls are married before eighteen every year.

Deaths

22 thousand

Impacted

640 million

Cost

$175 billion

Trend

Improving

A large, poorly measured chronic illness burden left behind by the pandemic.

Deaths

3.5 thousand

Impacted

65 million

Cost

$1 trillion

Trend

Steady

Private military groups and contractors operate in armed conflicts, creating risks to civilians, accountability, governance, and contractor personnel. The supplied evidence documents contractor deaths but does not support a global estimate of civilian harm, displacement, affected populations, economic losses, or environmental damage attributable specifically to these groups.

Deaths

8 thousand

Impacted

—

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

A militarised territorial dispute between two nuclear-armed states.

Deaths

45 thousand

(since 1989)

Impacted

13 million

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

An Islamist insurgency in northern Mozambique sitting on top of a major gas project.

Deaths

6 thousand

(since 2017)

Impacted

1.3 million

Cost

—

Trend

Worsening

A long-running armed conflict that has displaced a fifth of the population.

Deaths

12 thousand

(past decade)

Impacted

2.8 million

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

Deaths and disappearances on dangerous migration routes constitute an ongoing global humanitarian crisis. IOM-linked results report at least 7,667 people dead or missing worldwide in 2025, with roughly 340,000 family members directly affected; longer and more dangerous journeys may be worsening risks on major routes.

Deaths

68 thousand

Impacted

340 thousand

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

Aid-worker killings reached a reported record of 383 in 2024, underscoring worsening danger to humanitarian personnel.

Deaths

383

Impacted

907

Cost

—

Trend

Worsening

A practice affecting hundreds of millions of women, and population growth is outpacing decline.

Deaths

—

Impacted

230 million

Cost

$1.4 billion

Trend

Worsening

Governments switch off connectivity during exactly the moments it matters most.

Deaths

—

Impacted

700 million

Cost

$10 billion

Trend

Worsening

A globally recurring highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak causing extensive poultry and wild-bird mortality, agricultural disruption, food-price pressure, and sporadic human infections. The supplied evidence documents tens of millions of animal losses and multibillion-dollar costs, but does not establish a supported total for human deaths, people affected, or displacement.

Deaths

11

Impacted

26

Cost

$3 billion

Trend

Steady

A magnitude-7.4 earthquake in western Colombia reportedly killed hundreds and caused $9.57 billion in damage.

Deaths

—

Impacted

—

Cost

$9.6 billion

Trend

Steady

Uganda began emergency food distributions after drought and crop failures caused hunger affecting 1.5 million people and reportedly killed 19.

Deaths

19

Impacted

1.5 million

Cost

—

Trend

Worsening

AI-generated or manipulated audio, images, video, and text can enable fraud, impersonation, harassment, and disinformation, but the supplied evidence does not establish direct global casualties or a synthetic-media-specific economic loss estimate.

Deaths

—

Impacted

—

Cost

$1.6 billion

Trend

Steady

A wave of outbreaks driven by conflict, floods and broken water systems.

Deaths

6 thousand

(per year)

Impacted

700 thousand

Cost

—

Trend

Worsening

A resolved territorial war that produced the near-total displacement of a population.

Deaths

7 thousand

(2020-2023)

Impacted

120 thousand

Cost

—

Trend

Improving

A neglected rural killer with an effective treatment that rarely reaches victims.

Deaths

100 thousand

(per year)

Impacted

2.7 million

Cost

—

Trend

Steady

Flash floods and mudflows washed away villages near the Nepal-China border, killing over 150 people and leaving many missing.

Deaths

157

Impacted

3.2 billion

Cost

$1.3 trillion

Trend

Worsening

A magnitude-6.8 earthquake in Kyushu killed at least 13 people, left others missing and displaced thousands as rescue operations continued.

Deaths

13

Impacted

93 thousand

Cost

—

Trend

Worsening