"social degradation" is a perfectly valid phrase in written English.
It is an idiom that refers to a decline in social status or prestige, often due to a decision, action, or behavior. For example, you could say: "The politician's corrupt practices and unethical behavior led to his social degradation."
They were the pick of the land, and there was no social degradation in the act.
She captures the snobbery of an old-style teacher who makes "polytechnic" sound like a form of social degradation.
That outrage came not only from the topic of social degradation but, implicitly, from the knitting up of "inappropriate" words together: anchor and wanker here.
"I always resisted," he said, "because it's a violent book about social degradation, rape, and I didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands".
*** The human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together; we cannot adequately combat environmental degradation unless we attend to causes related to human and social degradation.
His allegorical novel The Pyramid, which deals with the Pharaoh Cheops's enslavement of his own people for the purpose of constructing his tomb, is a comprehensive, dazzlingly inventive anatomy of this stage of social degradation.
One result was "The Tribe of Ishmael: A Study in Social Degradation," which appeared in 1888.
Among economists on the left it is the fashion to dis-parage GDP growth because it does not cover happiness, quality of life, social equity, degradation of the environment and so on.
Stanton and her colleagues had staged a rebellion against what she called the "disenfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation".
However, Brazil struggles with extreme social inequalities, environmental degradation, intermittent financial crises, and a sometimes deadlocked political system.
Finally, it's just wrong to allow so many Americans to remain in a state of social and economic degradation without attempting to alter the conditions responsible for their suffering.
