The decade saw social, economic and general upheaval as wealth, production and western culture migrated to new industrializing economies. As economic liberalization increased in the western world, multiple multinational corporations associated with the manufacturing industry relocated into Mexico, Korea, Taiwan, China and new market economies in eastern Europe following the collapse of communism in eastern Europe.

Developing countries across the world facing increasing economic and social difficulties as they suffer from multiple debt crises in the 1980s, requiring many of these countries to apply for financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Ethiopia witnessed widespread famine in the mid-1980s, resulting in the country having to depend on foreign aid to provide food to its population and worldwide efforts to address and raise money to help Ethiopians, such as the famous Live Aid concert in 1985.

The western world witnessed the political revival of right-wing politics and advancement of neoliberalism with the rule of politicians including Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Ronald Reagan as President of the United States, Helmut Kohl as Chancellor of Germany, Brian Mulroney as Prime Minister of Canada and Carlos Salinas de Gortari as President of Mexico.

Major civil discontent and violence occurs in the Middle East including the Iran-Iraq War, major conflict and violence in Lebanon from 1982 to 1983, U.S. military action against Libya in 1985, and the First Intifada in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

In the eastern world, hostility to authoritarianism and the failing command economies of communist states resulted in a wave of reformist policies by communist regimes such as the policies of perestroika and glasnost in the USSR, along with the overthrows and attempted overthrows of a number of communist regimes, such as in Poland, Hungary, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in China, the Czechoslovak velvet revolution, and the overthrow of the dictatorial regime in Romania and other communist Warsaw Pact states in Central and Eastern Europe. It came to be called as the late 1980s purple passage of the autumn of nations. By 1989 with the disintigration of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union announced the abandonment of political hostility to the western world and thus the Cold War ended. These changes continued to be felt in the 1990s and into the 21st century.

The 1980s was also an era of tremendous population growth around the world, surpassing even the 1970s and 1990s for arguably being the largest in human history. Population growth was particularly rapid in a number of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian countries during this decade, with rates of natural increase close to or exceeding 4% annually.