Data Dive: What’s worrying people around the world the most this spring? Cash, crime and corruption.

Living through 2023 so far has felt like being on a seat-gripping flight with seemingly never-ending turbulence. 

Are clearer economic skies just ahead or are we about to nosedive into a global recession?

No one knows for sure.

What we do know for sure is that the cost-of-living crisis continues to be loom above all other issues as pandemic worry evaporates.

The percentage of people, on average globally, who consider inflation a top concern for their country surged to 41% in April 2023 versus just 9% in April 2020. On the flip side, worry about COVID-19 has dropped like a rock to a mere 6% in April 2023 vs. 61% in April 2020.

Inflation is now the top worry in the world for the 13^th month in a row, followed by poverty/social inequality, crime/violence, unemployment and financial/political corruption.

Here’s a deeper dive into monthly polling via Ipsos’ Global Advisor platform tracking the trajectory of the current top five worries in the world from pre-pandemic times, the early years of the COVID-19 crisis and through to the unofficial post-pandemic era we’re in now.  

1. Minds on our money, money on our minds
   Consumers are really feeling the pinch in 2023. It wasn’t always this way. In the springs of 2019, 2020 and 2021 inflation barely registered on many people’s radar even as the cost of living rose.
   Then, prices really exploded in many countries as pandemic restrictions loosened and the Russia-Ukraine war broke out. By April 2022, concern about COVID-19 was overtaken by inflation as the top worry in the world.

   Amid shakiness in the global banking sector and world economy in recent months, worry about inflation is still the number one concern but has plateaued with no clear signs on when or how the fever will finally break.

2. Barely surviving, not thriving
   In April 2019, poverty/social inequality was tied with unemployment and financial/political corruption as the top issue facing the world.
   As the pandemic hit and then wore on images of inequity on the news, from long lines at food banks to closed-for-business signs to homeless encampments, underlined how unfair life can be for so many.

   And while concern about poverty/inequality has stayed pretty stable over the past four years, other worries (namely COVID-19 from 2020-2021, then inflation from 2022-present) have taken some of the limelight away from this long-time and hard-to-solve global problem.

3. Law and order
   Pre-pandemic, crime/violence was seen as a pretty pressing issue. Then, overnight as many of us were spending most of our time at home alone worry about crime/violence dropped 11 percentage points year-over-year.
   When lockdowns, masking and social distancing mandates gradually loosened in many countries, people were increasingly out-and-about and stories about violence in gritty city downtowns started to ramp up.

   Concern about crime/violence has risen five percentage points in the past year as the world stumbles through these quasi-endemic times and is now almost back to April 2019 levels.

4. Confusing signals
   Despite mass furloughs and layoffs due to hard lockdowns in early 2020, concern about unemployment barely budged year-over-year in the early, scary days of the pandemic.
   More recently, it’s become common to see news of layoffs in some sectors, such as crypto and tech, run alongside stories about worker shortages in other sectors, like health and tourism. At the same time, some experts warn there could be a worldwide recession this year while others argue inflation could come down slowly enough to avoid prolonged pain.

   With that mixed bag of messages, unemployment is currently the number four worry in the world but concern is down ever so slightly year over year and is six percentage points below spring 2019 levels.

5. Shifting tides
   Like other issues, concern about financial/political corruption took a back seat as the coronavirus crisis was pushed to the forefront of people’s minds in 2020.
   By early 2021, some were cheering the start of COVID-19 vaccine rollouts while others jeered vaccine and mask mandates as anti-government sentiment spread alongside the virus.

   Concern about financial/political corruption soon shot back up close to pre-pandemic levels, then fell again and is now once again ticking up, rounding out Ipsos’ current top five worries in the world list.