OVERALL PROGRESS OF ALL SDGS

Abstract

Purpose: To provide methodologically sound method of measurement of one SDG at t-th year of
a country for the j-th SDG () and enabling computation of global SDG facilitating comparisons
across time and space
Method: The paper suggests multiplicative aggregation of indicators of i-th target of the j-th
SDG for a country at t-th year) (), which are similarly combined across the targets to find index
of SDG status of the country SDG ( and further aggregation of across countries to find .
Findings: Each proposed index gives absolute measure satisfying desired properties and
facilitates measure to indicate how far the country is from the and testing hypothesis =Log for a
country or for at a given year by t-tests. Similarity of path of progress of for i-th and j-th
countries can be quantified meaningfully.
Conclusions: The proposed method is applicable for SDG indicators expressed in proportions,
percentages, averages, rates, count data, etc. satisfying translation invariance and consistency in
aggregation. Future empirical investigations may be undertaken to estimate distribution of and
inter-linkages of various SDGs to prepare a comprehensive plan for achieving the 2030 Agenda.
Keywords: Sustainable development goals, SDG indicators and targets, Geometric mean,
Progress path, Cosine similarity, Statistical testing of hypothesis.
JEL classification: C43, E24, I32