Tracking the sustainable development goals: Emerging measurement challenges and further reflections

Hai-Anh Dang () and Umar Serajuddin

World Development, 2020, vol. 127, issue C

Abstract: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recently adopted by the United Nations represent an important step to identify shared global goals for development over the next two decades. Yet, the stated goals are not as straightforward and easy to interpret as they appear on the surface. Review of the SDG indicators suggests that some further refinements to their wordings and clarifications to their underlying objectives would be useful. We bring attention to potential pitfalls with interpretation, where different evaluation methods can lead to different conclusions about country performance. Review of the United Nations’ SDG database highlights the overwhelming challenge with missing data: data are available for just over half of all indicators and for just 19 percent of what is needed to comprehensively track progress across countries and over time. We offer further reflections and propose some simple but cost-effective solutions to these challenges.

Keywords: SDGs; Monitoring; Data challenges; Survey data; International organization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F00 I3 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X19301445
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Tracking the Sustainable Development Goals: Emerging measurement challenges and further reflections (2019)
Working Paper: Tracking the Sustainable Development Goals: Emerging Measurement Challenges and Further Reflections (2019)
Working Paper: Tracking the Sustainable Development Goals: Emerging Measurement Challenges and Further Reflections (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:127:y:2020:i:c:s0305750x19301445

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.05.024

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().