The world is awash with “Gen Z” protests spearheaded by youth. We want hospitals, not stadiums, was a common slogan during the recent protests in Morocco, demonstrating how underfunded programs like health and education are being cut short. The government was ousted in Madagascar as a result of the power and water outages. These protests are rooted in generational frustration, high levels of inequality, and public service deficits, and reflect the social contract being forged between young people and governments.
The Qatar World Summit for Social Development will take place this week. The world’s attention is being drawn to the urgent need to provide all people with access to health, education, social protection, and other essential services at this summit for the first time in 30 years. The most powerful and proven method for creating more equal, fairer societies is through these public services. The summit provides a crucial opportunity to fundamentally alter how public service is delivered, which is at the heart of the reconstruction of a new social contract between angry citizens and their governments.
Unfortunately, the trend is completely incorrect. Oxfam noted that 84 percent of nations have cut funding for education, health, and social protection in 2024. Nine out of ten nations have reacted in one or more areas. All of these areas fall far behind the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN. The Global South is also suffering more as a result of rich country aid cuts. By 2030, cuts to US foreign aid alone could add more than 14 million deaths.
However, the world has a lot of wealth: it is the largest overall. The majority of wealth is held by wealthy people, who hardly ever pay taxes. Since 1995, the global private wealth has increased by $ 34 trillion, or eight times as much as the global public wealth. The justification for taxing this wealth to pay for education, healthcare, and other public services is overwhelming, and Spain and Brazil’s leadership has given it a long-overdue boost.
In what has been called an “inheritance,” $70 trillion will be passed down from the wealthy to their children over the course of ten years, cementing inequality into the next generation. Meanwhile, those with sufficient funds are increasingly confined to good education and health. This wastes a generation’s talent. How many future climate scientists and engineers are never even able to graduate from high school? Children from wealthy families are hundreds of times more likely than those from less fortunate to get into college in many nations. The chances are even lower for girls from less fortunate families. This spreads into resentment and anger, so why is it inevitable?
In response to an ideological commitment to austerity and a shrinking state, the idea of a welfare state is fading away in front of us. Given the abundant evidence that robust welfare systems are essential for reducing inequality, addressing social disadvantage, and rebuilding trust, this is tragic. In contrast, failing to provide these risks causes unrest. While poor or corrupt service delivery lowers trust, improvements in the quality of service delivery increase public trust and satisfaction.
The generation that will no longer patiently wait for traditional party politics to address these issues has demonstrated in the Gen Z protests. They are digitally organizing and acting outside of established institutional channels. If governments don’t act on inequality and improve public services, they run the risk of provoking more protests and uprisings. In this regard, inequality and public service deficits are at their root within the Gen Z uprisings.
The good news is that all of this won’t be unavoidable. There are numerous instances of nations who have reversed the trend. Take Thailand as an example, which has a world-class public healthcare system that is accessible to all citizens. or the free education that has been provided for hundreds of millions of children across Africa. Every government has the power to provide good public services.
Governments should concentrate on promoting public wealth, not private wealth, in order to achieve this. They should reject the “private finance first” policies promoted as a panacea privatization, commercialization, and financialization of essential public services, such as healthcare, education, water, care, and social protection. This is a dangerous “dead end.”
In the fields of pharmaceuticals and healthcare, 49 new billionaires have been born over the past year. Despite this, 1.3 billion people are currently being left homeless by out-of-pocket health expenses, and half of the world’s population is still not covered by essential health services. The richest people, at a high cost, are the only ones who profit from privatized healthcare.
Governments ignore the provision of public services at their own risk, as the Gen Z movements do. They must use classrooms and clinics instead of batons and bullets.
