Measurement of Social Progress by Aggregated Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

Measurement of social progress of a nation can be best done using framework of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Avoiding normalization and weights, indicators of i-th target of the j-th SDG at t-th year of a country () is obtained by multiplicative aggregation which can further be aggregated to compute SDG status of a country ( and Global SDG (. Each proposed index enables to quantify distance of a country from the SDG targets of 2030 and testing hypothesis of equality of log( for countries i and j ( at t-th year and also equality of log() and (for same country by t-tests. Similarity of path of progress and decline of for two different countries across time can be quantified meaningfully. Novelty lies in application of the proposed multiplicative aggregation of SDG indicators in proportions, percentages, averages, rates, count data, etc. and satisfaction of translation invariance and consistency in aggregation. Policy makers and researchers can take advantages of the proposed method of multiplicative aggregation avoiding problems of normalization and assigning equal weight to the indicators and equal responsibility to all countries. 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 targets.