IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/inq/inqwps/ecineq2019-495.html

Tracking the Sustainable Development Goals: Emerging measurement challenges and further reflections

Author

Listed:
  • Hai-Anh H. Dang

    (World Bank)

  • Umar Serajuddin

    (World Bank)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Hai-Anh H. Dang & Umar Serajuddin, 2019. "Tracking the Sustainable Development Goals: Emerging measurement challenges and further reflections," Working Papers 495, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    • Handle: RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2019-495
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2019-495.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hai‐Anh Dang & Dean Jolliffe & Calogero Carletto, 2019. "Data Gaps, Data Incomparability, And Data Imputation: A Review Of Poverty Measurement Methods For Data‐Scarce Environments," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 757-797, July.
    2. Robert J. Gordon, 2016. "The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10544, December.
    3. Easterly, William, 2009. "How the Millennium Development Goals are Unfair to Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 26-35, January.
    4. Martin Ravallion, 2003. "Measuring Aggregate Welfare in Developing Countries: How Well Do National Accounts and Surveys Agree?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(3), pages 645-652, August.
    5. Sakiko Fukuda‐Parr & Desmond McNeill, 2019. "Knowledge and Politics in Setting and Measuring the SDGs: Introduction to Special Issue," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 10(S1), pages 5-15, January.
    6. A. Atkinson, 2003. "Multidimensional Deprivation: Contrasting Social Welfare and Counting Approaches," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 1(1), pages 51-65, April.
    7. Siqi Zheng & Matthew E. Kahn, 2017. "A New Era of Pollution Progress in Urban China?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(1), pages 71-92, Winter.
    8. Agnès Bénassy-Quéré & François Bourguignon & Stefan Dercon & Antonio Estache & Jan Willem Gunning & Ravi Kanbur & Stephan Klasen & Simon Maxwell & Jean-Philippe Platteau & Amadéo Spadaro, 2010. "The millennium development goals: an assessment," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-00685864, HAL.
    9. Michael A. Clemens & Michael Kremer, 2016. "The New Role for the World Bank," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(1), pages 53-76, Winter.
    10. Hai-Anh H. Dang & Andrew L. Dabalen, 2019. "Is Poverty in Africa Mostly Chronic or Transient? Evidence from Synthetic Panel Data," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(7), pages 1527-1547, July.
    11. Hai-Anh H. Dang & Peter F. Lanjouw, 2016. "Toward a New Definition of Shared Prosperity: A Dynamic Perspective from Three Countries," International Economic Association Series, in: Kaushik Basu & Joseph E. Stiglitz (ed.), Inequality and Growth: Patterns and Policy, chapter 5, pages 151-171, Palgrave Macmillan.
    12. Angus Deaton, 2005. "ERRATUM: Measuring Poverty in a Growing World (or Measuring Growth in a Poor World)," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(2), pages 395-395, May.
    13. Joseph Stiglitz & Jean-Paul Fitoussi & Martine Durand, 2018. "For Good Measure," Sciences Po Economics Publications (main) hal-03393118, HAL.
    14. Margherita Casini & Simone Bastianoni & Francesca Gagliardi & Massimo Gigliotti & Angelo Riccaboni & Gianni Betti, 2019. "Sustainable Development Goals Indicators: A Methodological Proposal for a Multidimensional Fuzzy Index in the Mediterranean Area," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-25, February.
    15. Kaushik Basu & Joseph E. Stiglitz (ed.), 2016. "Inequality and Growth: Patterns and Policy," International Economic Association Series, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-137-55459-8.
    16. Jeffrey D. Sachs & Richard Layard & John F. Helliwell, 2018. "World Happiness Report 2018," Working Papers id:12761, eSocialSciences.
    17. Grant J. Cameron & Hai‐Anh H. Dang & Mustafa Dinc & James Foster & Michael M. Lokshin, 2021. "Measuring the Statistical Capacity of Nations," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(4), pages 870-896, August.
    18. Enrique Ordaz, 2019. "The SDGs Indicators: A Challenging Task for the International Statistical Community," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 10(S1), pages 141-143, January.
    19. repec:bla:devpol:v:27:y:2009:i:4:p:355-371 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Gavin, Michael & Rodrik, Dani, 1995. "The World Bank in Historical Perspective," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(2), pages 329-334, May.
    21. Barbier, Edward B. & Burgess, Joanne C., 2019. "Sustainable development goal indicators: Analyzing trade-offs and complementarities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 295-305.
    22. Alkire, Sabina & Foster, James, 2011. "Counting and multidimensional poverty measurement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 476-487, August.
    23. Hai-Anh H. Dang & Peter F. Lanjouw & Umar Serajuddin, 2017. "Updating poverty estimates in the absence of regular and comparable consumption data: methods and illustration with reference to a middle-income country," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(4), pages 939-962.
    24. Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko & Greenstein, Joshua & Stewart, David, 2013. "How Should MDG Success and Failure be Judged: Faster Progress or Achieving the Targets?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 19-30.
    25. Katharine G. Abraham & John Haltiwanger & Kristin Sandusky & James R. Spletzer, 2013. "Exploring Differences in Employment between Household and Establishment Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(S1), pages 129-172.
    26. Serajuddin,Umar & Uematsu,Hiroki & Wieser,Christina & Yoshida,Nobuo & Dabalen,Andrew L., 2015. "Data deprivation : another deprivation to end," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7252, The World Bank.
    27. Kathleen Beegle & Luc Christiaensen & Andrew Dabalen & Isis Gaddis, 2016. "Poverty in a Rising Africa," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 22575, April.
    28. Clemens, Michael A. & Kenny, Charles J. & Moss, Todd J., 2007. "The Trouble with the MDGs: Confronting Expectations of Aid and Development Success," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 735-751, May.
    29. Kraay,Aart C., 2018. "Methodology for a World Bank Human Capital Index," Policy Research Working Paper Series 8593, The World Bank.
    30. Martin Ravallion, 2016. "The World Bank: Why It Is Still Needed and Why It Still Disappoints," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(1), pages 77-94, Winter.
    31. Joshi, Devin K. & Hughes, Barry B. & Sisk, Timothy D., 2015. "Improving Governance for the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals: Scenario Forecasting the Next 50years," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 286-302.
    32. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/3gpul0a2209cuatfpgqv8qt14j is not listed on IDEAS
    33. Richard Bavier, 2014. "Recent Trends in U.S. Income and Expenditure Poverty," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(3), pages 700-718, June.
    34. World Bank Group, 2015. "A Measured Approach to Ending Poverty and Boosting Shared Prosperity : Concepts, Data, and the Twin Goals," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 20384, April.
    35. Basu, Kaushik, 2013. "Shared prosperity and the mitigation of poverty : in practice and in precept," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6700, The World Bank.
    36. Michael Clemens and Michael Kremer, 2016. "The New Role of the World Bank - Working Paper 421," Working Papers 421, Center for Global Development.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dang,Hai-Anh H., 2018. "To impute or not to impute ? a review of alternative poverty estimation methods in the context of unavailable consumption data," Policy Research Working Paper Series 8403, The World Bank.
    2. Hai‐Anh Dang & Dean Jolliffe & Calogero Carletto, 2019. "Data Gaps, Data Incomparability, And Data Imputation: A Review Of Poverty Measurement Methods For Data‐Scarce Environments," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 757-797, July.
    3. Hai‐Anh H. Dang & Talip Kilic & Kseniya Abanokova & Calogero Carletto, 2025. "Poverty Imputation in Contexts Without Consumption Data: A Revisit With Further Refinements," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 71(1), February.
    4. Dang, Hai-Anh H & Carletto, Calogero, 2022. "Recall Bias Revisited: Measure Farm Labor Using Mixed-Mode Surveys and Multiple Imputation," IZA Discussion Papers 14997, IZA Network @ LISER.
    5. Grant J. Cameron & Hai‐Anh H. Dang & Mustafa Dinc & James Foster & Michael M. Lokshin, 2021. "Measuring the Statistical Capacity of Nations," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(4), pages 870-896, August.
    6. Go, Delfin S. & Quijada, Jose Alejandro, 2011. "Assessing the odds of achieving the MDGs," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5825, The World Bank.
    7. Ferreira,Francisco H. G., 2022. "The Analysis of Inequality in the Bretton Woods Institutions," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10149, The World Bank.
    8. Alkire, Sabina & Nogales, Ricardo & Quinn, Natalie Naïri & Suppa, Nicolai, 2023. "On track or not? Projecting the global Multidimensional Poverty Index," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    9. Ibrahima Sarr & Hai-Anh H. Dang & Carlos Santiago Guzman Gutierrez & Theresa Beltramo & Paolo Verme, 2025. "Using Cross-Survey Imputation to Estimate Poverty for Venezuelan Refugees in Colombia," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 177(1), pages 207-251, March.
    10. Hai‐Anh H. Dang, 2021. "To impute or not to impute, and how? A review of poverty‐estimation methods in the absence of consumption data," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 39(6), pages 1008-1030, November.
    11. Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Shaohua Chen & Andrew Dabalen & Yuri Dikhanov & Nada Hamadeh & Dean Jolliffe & Ambar Narayan & Espen Beer Prydz & Ana Revenga & Prem Sangraula & Umar Serajuddin & Nobuo Yosh, 2016. "A global count of the extreme poor in 2012: data issues, methodology and initial results," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(2), pages 141-172, June.
    12. Allison L. Hopkins & Cerian Gibbes & Viviane Clement & Armando F. Inurreta Díaz & Alba Reyes Can & Juan Jiménez-Osornio, 2025. "Analysis of sub-national variation in global development goals to inform locally relevant sustainable development," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 1575-1596, January.
    13. Nikos Chatzistamoulou & Phoebe Koundouri, "undated". "SDGs Patterns Across the Globe: From Theory to Practice," DEOS Working Papers 2016, Athens University of Economics and Business, revised 00 May 2020.
    14. Ekhator-Mobayode,Uche Eseosa & Hoogeveen,Johannes G., 2021. "Microdata Collection and Openness in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) : Introducing the MENAMicrodata Access Indicator," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9892, The World Bank.
    15. Mekonnen Bersisa & Almas Heshmati, 2021. "A Distributional Analysis of Uni-and Multidimensional Poverty and Inequalities in Ethiopia," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 155(3), pages 805-835, June.
    16. Dang, Hai-Anh H. & Pullinger,John & Serajuddin, Umar & Stacy, Brian William, 2024. "Reviewing Assessment Tools for Measuring Country Statistical Capacity," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10717, The World Bank.
    17. Francesco Farina, 2015. "Development theory and poverty. A review," Working Papers 46-2015, Macerata University, Department of Studies on Economic Development (DiSSE), revised Jan 2015.
    18. Wollburg,Philip Randolph & Hallegatte,Stephane & Mahler,Daniel Gerszon, 2023. "The Climate Implications of Ending Global Poverty," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10318, The World Bank.
    19. Hai-Anh H. Dang, 2019. "To impute or not to impute, and how? A review of alternative poverty estimation methods in the context of unavailable consumption data," Working Papers 507, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    20. Dang,Hai-Anh H. & Verme,Paolo, 2019. "Estimating Poverty for Refugee Populations : Can Cross-Survey Imputation Methods Substitute for Data Scarcity ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9076, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • F00 - International Economics - - General - - - General
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2019-495. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Maria Ana Lugo The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Maria Ana Lugo to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecineea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.