社会政策（英语：Social policy），是通过国家立法和政府行政干预，解决社会问题，促进社会安全，改善社会环境，增进社会福利的一系列政策、行动准则和规定的总称。其核心是解决市场经济下公民的社会风险。

一般认为，社会政策起源于1873年德国学者组织的“社会政策学会”。第一个给予社会政策以科学概念的是瓦格纳（Adolph Wagner）。1891年他在发表的一篇论文中提出，社会政策是运用立法和行政手段，调节财产所得和劳动所得之间的分配不均问题。但是只有到了20世纪的中期以后，由于经济学、政治学和系统科学等学科的加盟，源于社会福利理论的社会政策才逐渐成为为具有开放性、交叉性和系统性等特点的独立的应用社会科学学科。

Social policy is a term which is applied to various areas of policy, usually within a governmental or political setting (such as the welfare state and study of social services).

It can refer to guidelines, principles, legislation and activities that affect the living conditions conducive to human welfare, such as a person's quality of life. The Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics defines social policy as "an interdisciplinary and applied subject concerned with the analysis of societies' responses to social need", which seeks to foster in its students a capacity to understand theory and evidence drawn from a wide range of social science disciplines, including economics, sociology, psychology, geography, history, law, philosophy and political science. The Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard University describes social policy as "public policy and practice in the areas of health care, human services, criminal justice, inequality, education, and labor". Social policy research and teaching at the Department of Social Policy at Oxford is largely focused on international comparative work, as a full picture of the development and operation of a particular system can only be gained by benchmarking against other jurisdictions. Social policy might also be described as actions that affect the well-being of members of a society through shaping the distribution of and access to goods and resources in that society. Social policy often deals with wicked problems.