The Sustainable Development Report 2024 provides an assessment of progress towards the SDGs for all UN member states. The SDG Index score is presented on a scale of 0 to 100 and can be interpreted as a percentage towards optimal performance on the SDGs. Therefore, the difference between 100 and a country’s SDG Index score is the distance, in percentage points, that must be overcome to reach optimum SDG performance. To minimize missing data bias, we do not calculate an overall SDG Index score and rank for countries missing data on more than 20 percent of the indicators. The same basket of indicators and similar performance thresholds are used for all countries to generate comparable scores and rankings.

Substantial differences in rankings may be due to small differences in aggregate SDG Index scores. This calls for caution when interpreting differences in rankings between countries. Differences of two or three positions between countries should not be interpreted as “significant”, whereas differences of 10 places may be ascribed to meaningful differences in performance. For further details, see the statistical audit by Papadimitriou et al. (2019) conducted on behalf of the EU Joint Research Centre (JRC).

The SDG Dashboards provide a visual representation of countries’ performance on the 17 SDGs. The “traffic light” color scheme (green, yellow, orange, and red) illustrates how far a country is from achieving a particular goal. The SDG Dashboards are presented for all countries where data permits, including countries not included in the SDG Index. As in previous years, the SDG Dashboards and country profiles for OECD countries include additional metrics that are not available for non-OECD member states.

The SDG Trend Dashboards indicate whether a country is on track to achieve each individual goal by 2030 based on past performance. It builds on past annual growth rates, since 2015, which are extrapolated to 2030. Indicator trends are aggregated at the goal level to give an indication of how the country is progressing towards that SDG.

This section provides a brief summary of the methods used to compute the SDG Index and Dashboards. A detailed methodology paper is accessible online (Lafortune et al., 2018). The European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) conducted an independent statistical audit of the report’s methodology and results in 2019, reviewing the conceptual and statistical coherence of the index structure. The detailed statistical audit report and additional data tables are available on our website: www.sdgtransformationcenter.org

Due to time lags in international statistics, this year’s edition may not fully capture the severe consequences on the SDGs of the war in Ukraine and of other geopolitical and security crises over the past two years. The data for Ukraine correspond to a large extent to the situation before February 2022, as many data points have not been able to be updated since then. The inclusion of an indicator on exports of major conventional arms should not be interpreted as a value judgment by the authors on the policies implemented in the context of the war in Ukraine, but rather as an effort to evaluate more generally trends towards disarmament recognized by the United Nations as well as by civil society organizations as an important priority for peace, socio-economic stability and sustainable development (UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, 2018; Amnesty International, 2008).

The 2024 SDG Index covers 167 countries, one more than last year (Guinea-Bissau). This year, the SDR continues to integrate more indicators that build on geographic information systems (GIS) to increase data availability and timeliness. For example, under SDG 15 (Life on Land), we included a new indicator on imported deforestation that uses geospatial datasets on yearly deforestation, crop and livestock distribution and main deforestation drivers, as well as carbon stocks, and links those results to MRIO tables in order to attribute deforestation to the final consumer of each commodity.

Source: Authors

This edition also incorporates one new spillover indicator on countries’ support to UN-based Multilateralism (See Part 3). Table A.1 summarizes these additions and identifies indicators that were replaced or modified due to changes in the methodology and estimates produced by data providers.

As last year, we present an overview of where the world stands on SDG progress, calculated using a population-weighted average for all UN member states. For the first time, BRICS (Brazil, Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa) and BRICS+ country profiles are also presented.

Due to changes in the indicators and refinements in the methodology, SDG Index rankings and scores from one edition cannot be compared with the results from previous editions. However, Part 2 provides time series for the SDG Index calculated retroactively using this year’s indicators and methods, providing results that are comparable across time. The full time series for the SDG Index are available for download online and on our interactive data visualization at sdgtransformationcenter.org.

Despite our best efforts to identify data for the SDGs, several indicator and data gaps persist at the international level (Table A.2).

Source: Authors

To ensure the results are comparable across countries, we do not incorporate estimates received directly from national statistical offices. Data providers may adjust national data to ensure international comparability. As a result, some data points presented in this report may differ from data available from national sources. Moreover, the length of the validation processes by international organizations can lead to significant delays in publishing some data. National statistical offices may therefore have more recent data for some indicators than presented in this report.

The SDG Index provides a comprehensive assessment of distance to targets based on the most up-to-date data available covering all 193 UN member States. This year’s report includes 98 global indicators and 27 additional indicators included specifically for OECD countries’ dashboards (due to better data coverage).

The following sections provide an overview of the methodology for indicator selection, normalization, aggregation and for generating indications on trends over time. Additional information including raw data, additional data tables and sensitivity tests, is available online.

Where possible, we use official SDG indicators endorsed by the UN Statistical Commission. Where there are data gaps or insufficient data available for an official indicator, we include other metrics from official and unofficial providers. We used five criteria in selecting indicators suitable for inclusion in the report:

1. Their global relevance and applicability to a broad range of country settings.

2. Statistical adequacy: The indicators represent valid and reliable measures.

3. Timeliness: The indicators are current and published on a timely schedule.

4. Coverage: Data is available for at least 80 percent of UN member states with a population > 1 million.¹

5. Distance to targets must be measurable (optimal performance can be defined).

Data sources

The data come from a mix of official and non-official data sources. Most of the data (around two-thirds) come from international organizations (World Bank, OECD, WHO, FAO, ILO, UNICEF, other) which have extensive and rigorous data validation processes. Other data sources (around one-third) come from less traditional statistics including household surveys (Gallup World Poll), civil society organizations and networks (Oxfam, the Tax Justice Network, the World Justice Project, Reporters Without Borders), peer-reviewed journals (e.g., to track international spillovers), and geographic information systems (GIS). These non-official data sources complement other data sources and help increase data availability and timeliness for key SDG indicators and targets. The full list of indicators and data sources is available in Table A.5 and online. The data for this year’s edition were extracted between March and April 2024.

To minimize biases from missing data, the SDG Index only includes countries that have data for at least 80 percent of the indicators. We make an exception for countries that have been in previous editions of the SDG Index as long as they are not missing more than 25 percent of the data.² The list of countries not included in the SDG Index due to missing data is presented in Table A.3 below. We include all UN member countries in the SDG Dashboards and country profiles, which also indicate where there are gaps in available SDG data for a country. We generally do not impute or model any missing data, except for a few exceptional circumstances. The list of indicators that include imputed data is available online in the Codebook.

Source: Authors' analysis

The procedure for calculating the SDG Index comprises three steps: (i) establish performance thresholds and censor extreme values from the distribution of each indicator; (ii) rescale the data to ensure comparability across indicators (normalization); (iii) aggregate the indicators within and across SDGs.

Establishing performance thresholds

To make the data comparable across indicators, each variable was rescaled from 0 to 100, with 0 denoting worst performance and 100 describing the optimum. Rescaling is sensitive to the choice of limits and extreme values (outliers). The latter may become unintended thresholds and introduce spurious variability in the data. Consequently, the choice of upper and lower bounds can affect the relative ranking of countries in the index.

The upper bound for each indicator was determined using the following decision tree:

1. Use the absolute quantitative thresholds of the SDGs and targets: e.g., zero poverty, universal school completion, universal access to water and sanitation, full gender equality.

2. Where no explicit SDG target is available, apply the principle of “Leave-No-One-Behind” to set the upper bound to universal access, or zero deprivation.

3. Where science-based targets exist that must be achieved by 2030 or later, use these to set the 100% upper bound (e.g., zero greenhouse gas emissions from CO₂ as required by no later than 2050 to limit global warming to 1.5°C, 100% sustainable management of fisheries).

4. For all other indicators, use the average of the top five performers.

These principles interpret the SDGs as “stretch targets” and focus attention on those indicators where a country is lagging behind. The lower bound was defined at the ^2.5th percentile of the distribution. Each indicator distribution was censored, so that all values exceeding the upper bound scored 100, and values below the lower bound scored 0.

Normalization

After establishing the upper and lower bounds, variables were transformed linearly to a scale between 0 and 100 using the following rescaling formula for the range [0; 100]:

Image A.1 | Rescaling equation

where x is the raw data value; max/min denote the upper and lower bounds, respectively; and x’ is the normalized value after rescaling.

The rescaling equation ensured that all rescaled variables were expressed as ascending variables (i.e., higher values denoted better performance). In this way, the rescaled data became easy to interpret and compare across all indicators: a country that scores 50 on a variable is halfway towards achieving the optimum value, whereas a country with a score of 75 has covered three quarters of the distance from worst to best.

Weighting and aggregation

The results of several rounds of expert consultations on earlier drafts of the SDG Index made clear that there was no consensus across different epistemic communities on assigning higher weights to some SDGs over others. As a normative assumption, we therefore opted for fixed, equal weight to every SDG to reflect policymakers’ commitment to treat all SDGs equally and as an integrated and indivisible set of goals. This implies that to improve their SDG Index score countries need to place attention on all goals with a particular focus on goals where they are furthest from achieving the SDGs and where incremental progress might therefore be expected to be fastest.

To compute the SDG Index, we first estimate scores for each goal using the arithmetic mean of indicators for that goal. These goal scores are then averaged across all 17 SDGs to obtain the SDG Index score. The results of various sensitivity tests are available online including comparisons of arithmetic mean versus geometric mean and Monte-Carlo simulations at the Index and Goal level. Monte-Carlo simulations call for prudence in interpreting small differences in the Index scores and rankings between countries as those may be sensitive to the weighting scheme.

Dashboards

We introduced additional quantitative thresholds for each indicator to group countries in a “traffic light” table. Thresholds were established based on statistical techniques and through various rounds of consultations with experts conducted since 2016.

Averaging across all indicators for an SDG might hide areas of policy concern if a country performs well on most indicators but faces serious shortfalls on one or two metrics within the same SDG (often referred to as the issue “substitutability” or “compensation”). This applies particularly to high-income and upper-middle-income countries that have made significant progress on many SDG dimensions but may face serious shortfalls on individual variables, for example on the sustainability of diets and agriculture within SDG 2.

As a result, the SDG Dashboards focus exclusively on the two variables on which a country performs worst. We applied the additional rule that a red rating was assigned only if both the worst-performing indicators score red. Similarly, to score green, both indicators had to be green. The quantitative thresholds used for generating the dashboards are available in Table A5.

SDG Trends

Using historic data, we estimate how fast a country has been progressing towards an SDG and determine whether – if extrapolated into the future – this pace will be sufficient to achieve the SDG by 2030. For each indicator, SDG achievement is defined by the green threshold set for the SDG Dashboards. The difference in percentage points between the green threshold and the normalized country score denotes the gap that must be closed to meet that goal. To estimate trends at the indicator level, we calculated the linear annual growth rates (i.e., annual percentage improvements) needed to achieve the target by 2030 (i.e., 2015–2030) which we compared to the average annual growth rate over the most recent period since the adoption of the SDGs in 2015 (e.g. 2015–2023). Progress towards achievement on a particular indicator is described using a 4-arrow system (Figure 4.1). Figure A.2 illustrates the methodology graphically. Because time series data is required for these calculations, indicators with only one or very few data points across time could not be used for these analyses. The list of indicators used to generate the trend indications is available in Table A6.

Source: Authors

Because projections are based on the growth rate over the last several years, a country might have observed a decline in performance in the past year (for instance due to the impact of COVID-19) but still be considered as being on track. This methodology emphasizes long-term structural changes over time since the adoption of the SDGs in 2015, and less so annual changes which may be cyclical or temporary. Countries that currently exceed an indicator target but have decreased since 2015, are assigned an orange arrow. This is because if the decreasing trend continues, the country may no longer meet the SDG target in the future.

Status of SDG targets

In addition to the SDG Index, Dashboards and Trends, we present an assessment of the status of SDG targets for all countries and for the world overall. To make this assessment, we only use trend indicators (Table A5) since time series data was needed to calculate rates of progress. Indicators used for OECD countries only were excluded to provide comparable results across countries.

In the case where the past rate of progress is sufficient to meet the target by 2030 – corresponding to the green arrow “On track or maintaining SDG achievement” — the indicator is counted as a target on track. Indicators where past rates of progress are insufficient to meet the SDG target — corresponding to the orange “stagnating” or yellow “moderately improving” arrows — are counted as limited progress. Finally, indicators that are going in the wrong direction — the red arrow “decreasing” — were counted as worsening. Indicators for which a country has already met the target but have decreased in score since 2015 were also considered worsening. For the assessment of the status of SDG targets for the World (population-weighted average), we only considered as on track those indicators that showed consistent progress both in the long term (since 2015) and in the short term (the most recent year of reference for the indicator).

The 2024 International Spillover Index tracks the impacts of a given country’s actions on others. The Sustainable Development Report 2024 contains 16 spillover indicators, including two that are used only in the dashboards for OECD countries. The 14 remaining indicators are used to calculate the International Spillover Index Score. These indicators can be organized into three categories of international spillovers: 1) environmental and social impacts embodied into trade; 2) economy and finance and 3) UN-based multilateralism, peace and security. The International Spillover Index Score is calculated as the arithmetic average of a country’s score on all of the indicators, weighted equally. The score ranges from 0 to 100, where a lower score denotes more negative spillover impacts and a higher score denotes fewer negative spillover impacts.

Note: * = Denotes OECD only indicator

Source: Authors

Note: The inclusion of an indicator on export of major conventional weapons should not be interpreted as a value judgment by the authors on the policies implemented in the context of the war in Ukraine, but rather as an effort to evaluate more generally trends towards disarmament recognized by the UN and civil society organizations as an important priority for peace, socio-economic stability and sustainable development (UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, 2018; Amnesty International, 2008).

Source: Authors

Note: The inclusion of an indicator on export of major conventional weapons should not be interpreted as a value judgment by the authors on the policies implemented in the context of the war in Ukraine, but rather as an effort to evaluate more generally trends towards disarmament recognized by the UN and civil society organizations as an important priority for peace, socio-economic stability and sustainable development (UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, 2018; Amnesty International, 2008).

Source: Authors

Note: The inclusion of an indicator on export of major conventional weapons should not be interpreted as a value judgment by the authors on the policies implemented in the context of the war in Ukraine, but rather as an effort to evaluate more generally trends towards disarmament recognized by the UN and civil society organizations as an important priority for peace, socio-economic stability and sustainable development (UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, 2018; Amnesty International, 2008).

Source: Authors

Note: The inclusion of an indicator on export of major conventional weapons should not be interpreted as a value judgment by the authors on the policies implemented in the context of the war in Ukraine, but rather as an effort to evaluate more generally trends towards disarmament recognized by the UN and civil society organizations as an important priority for peace, socio-economic stability and sustainable development (UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, 2018; Amnesty International, 2008).

Source: Authors

Note: The inclusion of an indicator on export of major conventional weapons should not be interpreted as a value judgment by the authors on the policies implemented in the context of the war in Ukraine, but rather as an effort to evaluate more generally trends towards disarmament recognized by the UN and civil society organizations as an important priority for peace, socio-economic stability and sustainable development (UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, 2018; Amnesty International, 2008).

Source: Authors