A statistical approach for assessing progress towards the SDG targets

Abstract

The global SDG indicator framework establishes a set of measurement tools to assess country performances in a comparable way, and helps governments to identify appropriate policy interventions to achieve the SDG targets. Five years into the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, however, still different methods are being used by leading international organizations for assessing whether the SDG targets will be achieved or not. This may lead to different results, sometimes contradictory, generating confusion among users and policy-makers, who therefore cannot base their policy decisions on solid and coherent assessments. This article describes some of the solutions proposed by leading international organizations to address two distinct measurement objectives: (i) monitor the “current” status of achievement of a SDG target, i.e. the situation as pictured by the latest available data, and (ii) assess whether the SDG targets can be achieved by 2030. These distinct objectives are then translated in various methodological approaches, that often include also a way for identifying the targets when not explicitly set, and the procedure to obtain regional and global aggregates (as well as, aggregates by target and goal). This article provides a critical overview of the different approaches and proposes a unified coherent statistical approach for progress and status assessments, highlighting its advantages over the alternative approaches, and demonstrate its application to a specific FAO indicator. The article focuses mainly on the assessment of (i) and (ii), while is not intended to investigate the issues related the aggregation of results at target/goal level, a topic that is beyond the scope of this work.