Social policy is a plan or action of government or institutional agencies that aim to improve or reform society. It is an interdisciplinary and applied academic subject concerning human needs, social justice, and individual and collective well-being. Social policy is concerned with the ways societies across the world meet human needs for security, education, work, health, and well-being. It is an area of study that draws upon elements of economics, history, politics, psychology, and sociology to analyze how societies respond to social problems, the progress made by these responses, and how this progress is measured.

Social policy aims to identify and find ways of reducing inequalities in access to services and support between social groups defined by socio-economic status, race, ethnicity, migration status, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and age, and between countries. It deals with wicked problems and aims to improve human welfare and meet human needs for education, health, housing, and economic security.

Important areas of social policy include well-being and welfare, poverty reduction, social security, justice, unemployment insurance, living conditions, animal rights, pensions, health care, social housing, family policy, social care, child protection, social exclusion, and more. Social policy is not a discipline but a field of study that focuses on human need and what governments and other bodies can do to meet it. It is a multi-disciplinary and normative approach that is concerned with the complexity of human welfare and how our society fails and succeeds in meeting it.