"State of the World" is a song recorded by American singer Janet Jackson for her fourth studio album, Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989). It was written and produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, with additional writing by Jackson. While recording the album, Jackson and the producers watched television, especially news channels, and created the song inspired by that. "State of the World" focuses lyrically on homeless people. It was released as the eighth and final single from the album on February 6, 1991, by A&M Records.

The song was not released commercially in the United States, making it ineligible to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 or the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, but it reached number five on Billboard's Hot 100 Airplay chart. No music video was made to accompany the song. Jackson has only included "State of the World" on her Rhythm Nation World Tour in 1990.

Following the commercial and critical success of her 1986 album, Control, Jackson was motivated to continue songwriting and took a larger role in the creative production of her new album. Executives at A&M requested that she expand on the ideas presented on Control, suggesting a concept album entitled Scandal that would have been about the Jackson family. She wrote a song titled "You Need Me" which was directed at her father Joseph, but was unwilling to devote an entire album to the subject and substituted her own concept for theirs. She commented that "[a] lot of people wanted me to do another album like Control and that's what I didn't want to do. I wanted to do something that I really believed in and that I really felt strong about." The concept of Rhythm Nation emerged as Jackson was a TV watcher, "We would watch BET, MTV ... then switched over to CNN, and there'd always be something messed-up happening. It was never good news, always bad news", producer James "Jimmy Jam" Harris recalled. "State of the World" was one of these songs, influenced by TV and news. Jam recalled that with the song, they were trying to do something like Marvin Gaye's song "What's Going On" although we never could hope to achieve that, but still wanted to make people aware of what was happening in a way they could dance to it. Released on February 6, 1991, "State of the World" was the eighth and the final single of Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814. The record label reckoned that they would boost album sales with a radio-only promotion.

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