•The global economy is still recovering from the 2020 pandemic and faces an uncertain outlook while, globally, social inequality increases.

With the global population expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030,1 basic services which guarantee a decent life will need to expand with population growth, in addition to filling existing shortfalls.

Under-investment in social infrastructure has led to an erosion of social mobility. The prospects of those born into the lowest income brackets look bleaker among today’s younger generations than in previous years.

• As policy-makers aim to balance crisis management with longer-term recovery priorities, this White Paper focuses on three foundational social institutions – education, healthcare and care – that can benefit from key investments to re-start the engine of social mobility across economies, filling unmet demand for healthcare and childcare, as well as increasing the quality of education systems.

• Such investments, applied as a case study to the United States (US) economy, would deliver growth in GDP and additional job creation in the period up to 2030. Every dollar of investment would deliver a multiplier effect of 2.3 times the initial investment.

• In the modelling exercise, a $1.3 trillion investment resulting in a $ 3.1 trillion GDP return would also create 10 million additional jobs in the social sector and close to 1 million in other sectors, totalling 11 million jobs to be created by 2030.