The scale of the public diagnosis is remarkable in its consistency. Seven in ten respondents, or 70 percent, say there is too much economic inequality in their country. Nearly two-thirds, 65 percent, believe the economic system is rigged to benefit the rich and powerful. And 69 percent want major changes to the economic system, against just 8 percent who disagree. These figures describe societies that are remarkably united in identifying what is wrong with the economy, even as they report feeling more divided than ever. The survey’s authors argue that this combination of shared grievance and fractured social fabric represents one of the most consequential political dynamics of the decade.

The trust data tells a story of rapid deterioration. Only 31 percent of respondents believe their government will make decisions that benefit the majority of people twenty or thirty years from now. That figure stood at 39 percent in 2024, meaning confidence in long-term governmental stewardship has fallen by eight percentage points in just two years. The report’s co-author Kate Pickett, Professor for the Public Understanding of Social Sciences at the University of York, a member of the Club of Rome and co-author of The Spirit Level, said the pattern is deeply concerning. People right across the income spectrum, in country after country, have arrived at the same diagnosis: that the system is rigged and that inequality has gone too far. When people stop believing that their government will act in their interest long-term, she noted, it corrodes the sense of shared future that healthy societies depend on.

The collapse of institutional trust runs through the wider social fabric, according to the survey’s findings on perceived division. Two-thirds of respondents, 67 percent, say their country is more divided than it was a decade ago. Respondents identified serious tension along several distinct fault lines. Some 71 percent perceive serious tension between supporters of different political parties, 63 percent between people on high and low incomes, 62 percent between immigrants and the native-born, and 53 percent between the climate-concerned and the climate-sceptical. Taken together, these figures sketch a portrait of societies in which economic grievance, partisan polarisation, migration anxieties and environmental conflict reinforce one another, producing a pervasive sense of fragmentation even among populations that agree on the underlying economic problem.

Perhaps the most politically charged finding concerns the stability of democratic commitment itself. Support for democracy in principle remains strong, with 68 percent of respondents saying it is the best way to govern their country. Yet democracy is increasingly contested in practice. Some 40 percent say their country would be better off with a strong leader unconstrained by parliament and elections. That figure rises above half in several upper-middle-income countries, a pattern that suggests the appeal of unconstrained executive power is not confined to any single region or income level but grows where the gap between popular demands and governmental responsiveness is widest.

Owen Gaffney, the report’s co-author and narrative chair of Earth4All, framed the findings as evidence of a widening gap between public appetite and political supply. This survey captures a gap that Earth4All has been tracking for several years now, he said. The public wants systemic economic change, yet mainstream politics is consistently failing to offer it. His warning about the consequences of that vacuum is pointed: when the gap is left unaddressed, it gets filled by whoever is willing to promise radical change first, democratic safeguards or not. The opportunity, in his view, lies in forging a new kind of social contract, one that takes seriously the scale of change people are asking for and delivers it through fair and democratic means.

The survey is the third in a series conducted by Earth4All since 2021 examining changing public attitudes toward social and political system change. Its methodology is substantial. Ipsos conducted the polling across G20 countries plus Sweden, with three notable exclusions. China and Saudi Arabia were omitted owing to sensitivities around questions of a political nature, and Russia was excluded because of the war in Ukraine. The seventeen countries surveyed together account for 58 percent of global GDP, 38 percent of the world’s population and 37 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry. That footprint means the findings cannot be dismissed as a niche or regional snapshot; they describe the attitudes of the populations that dominate the global economy and drive the majority of its emissions.

The report arrives at a moment when the technical case for economic restructuring has been building for years. Earth4All advocates five key turnarounds to achieve wellbeing for all within planetary boundaries. The first is to eliminate poverty by growing the economies of the poorest countries through green investment and cancelling their debts to high-income countries. The second is to reduce inequality by increasing taxes on the top 10 percent, strengthening workers’ rights and introducing citizens’ funds to give everyone access to a nation’s wealth. The third is to empower women by increasing access to education, putting them in leadership positions and equalising pensions. The fourth is to transform food systems by cutting waste and stopping the conversion of wild landscapes to farmland. The fifth is to transform energy use by immediately phasing out fossil fuels, electrifying everything and investing seriously in renewables and energy efficiency.

What makes the survey’s findings resonate is the alignment between public sentiment and this reform agenda. The public’s demand for major systemic change, expressed by 69 percent of respondents, maps onto proposals that address precisely the grievances citizens identify: rigged economies, excessive inequality and governments that serve narrow interests. Yet the trust deficit documented in the data creates a formidable implementation problem. Reforms of this scale require sustained public cooperation, tax compliance, behavioural change and electoral patience, all of which depend on citizens believing that sacrifices will be shared fairly and that governments will honour long-term commitments. With only 31 percent expressing confidence in governments’ long-term benevolence, the political capital needed to enact transformative policy appears to be eroding at exactly the moment its necessity is most widely acknowledged.

The implications extend well beyond the seventeen surveyed countries. If mainstream democratic politics cannot convert a 69 percent mandate for change into credible policy, the survey’s authors warn, the political space will be contested by actors offering radical alternatives without democratic guardrails. The 40 percent openness to a strong leader unconstrained by parliament and elections, rising above half in several upper-middle-income countries, is the leading indicator of that risk. Conversely, the near-universal agreement on the diagnosis, that inequality has gone too far and the system favours the rich and powerful, suggests an unusual reservoir of common ground on which a renewed social contract could be built. The report’s title captures both the problem and the prescription: economies perceived as rigged and societies experienced as fractured demand rebuilding trust, and the case for change is no longer contested by the public but by the capacity of institutions to deliver it. Whether governments can close the gap between what people want and what they believe is possible may define the political decade ahead.

Subject of Research: Public attitudes toward economic system change, inequality and trust in government across 17 major economies

Article Title: People want economic system change – but have stopped trusting anyone to deliver it

Article References: People want economic system change – but have stopped trusting anyone to deliver it. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Earth4All, Ipsos survey, economic inequality, public trust, democracy, G20, social cohesion, system change, Club of Rome, political polarisation, social contract, planetary boundaries