Measuring Sustainable Development Goals Performance

Measuring Sustainable Development Goals Performance provides a quantitative and analytical framework for evaluating social, economic, and environmental policies aiming at the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs). Continuing their earlier work on multidimensional analysis, the authors demonstrate how nations can be ranked in terms of their performance in meeting a given set of SDGs, providing numerical calculation of SDGs deficit. Their calculations show that even before the arrival of the COVID-19 virus, there existed in several large Western nations undetected pockets of SDG deficits, such as in the care for the elderly, personal safety, and hygiene. Extending the calculations to cover COVID-19 data for 2020, it turns out that the same deficit nations also suffered excess death rates caused by the virus.

This book offers a balanced and holistic paradigm for evaluating progress of the SDGs, assisting the convergence of national and international efforts toward economic development, social progress, and environmental protection.

Sten Thore was installed as a Centennial Fellow of the University of Texas on the occasion of the centennial celebrations of the university in 1983, and was recognized as a Centennial Fellow Emeritus on his retirement, having served the university for 20 years. Moving to Lisbon, Portugal he was appointed to the Luso-American chair in the Commercialization of Science and Technology at the Institute Superior Técnico, Lisbon, and eventually settled in the northern hills of the Algarve. In 2012 he was awarded a PhD Jubilarem by the University of Stockholm, Sweden.
Ruzanna Tarverdyan is President of The Geneva Consensus Foundation, which under her leadership gained Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Social and Economic Council. She is an economist-mathematician with 30 years of professional work. She served the government of Armenia, holding senior positions in the ministries of finance and economy (Trade and Investment Department, Audit Department, Armenian Aid Coordination Center, Government's Tender Board) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) as a research economist in Moscow and at the Geneva headquarters. She has taught at the ILO International Training Center at Turin, Italy, and she is a member of the editorial board of several international journals.