World Development 127 (2020) 104749

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World Development
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev

Are we on the right path to achieve the sustainable development goals?

Jonathan D. Moyer a,b,⇑, Steve Hedden a,b
a
Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, 2201 South Gaylord Street, Denver, CO 80203, USA
b
Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, 2201 South Gaylord Street, Denver, CO 80203, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call upon all countries to achieve 17 broad development goals
Accepted 6 November 2019 by 2030. The SDGs are a central component of many national development plans and foreign aid strate-
Available online 20 November 2019 gies. While the SDGs have become a central aspect of development planning, how achievable are they
under present conditions? This paper explores a dynamic ‘‘middle-of-the-road” baseline global develop-
Keywords: ment scenario (Shared Socio-economic Pathway 2) using an integrated assessment model (International
Sustainable Development Goals Futures) to evaluate progress toward target values on nine indicators related to six human development
Human development
SDGs. We find that, between 2015 and 30, the world will make only limited progress towards achieving
Assessment
Projections
those SDGs with our current set of policy priorities. Our study finds that across the variables explored
Quantitative modelling here (nine indicators for 186 countries = 1674 country-indicators), 43 percent had already reached target
Forecasting values by 2015. By 2030, target values are projected to be achieved for 53 percent of country-variables.
This paper highlights special difficulty in achieving targets on some SDG indicators (access to safe sani-
tation, upper secondary school completion, and underweight children) representing persistent develop-
ment issues that will not be solved without a significant shift in domestic and international aid policies
and prioritization. In addition, we highlight 28 particularly vulnerable countries that are not projected to
achieve any of the nine human development related target values in a middle-of-the-road scenario. These
most vulnerable countries (MVCs) must be the focus of international assistance.
Ó 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction
The Sustainable Development Goals are an integrated frame-
work of human, social, and environmental development objectives
that include 17 goals with 169 targets and 232 specific indicators
(Griggs et al., 2013; UNGA, 2015). They represent a global agree-
ment across United Nation’s member states that have been widely
used in national development plans (UNDG, 2017), academic
research (Cole, Bailey, & New, 2017; Cumming et al., 2017;
Rickels et al., 2016), and foreign aid prioritization (DfID, 2017;
Wainer & Russell, 2016). Much work has been accomplished mea-
suring and monitoring the current status of SDG achievement
using indices and benchmarks (Golding et al., 2017; Lim et al.,
2016; OECD, 2017; Sachs, Schmidt-Traub, Kroll, Lafortune, &
Fuller, 2018; Schmidt-Traub, Kroll, Teksoz, Durand-Delacre, &
Sachs, 2017; WHO, 2017b; World Bank, 2017).
While the SDGs have already influenced political decision-
making, how likely are we to achieve these targets if we continue
with our current policy prioritization? Are we on the right path?
⇑ Corresponding author at: Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures,
2201 South Gaylord Street, Denver, CO 80203, USA.
E-mail address: jmoyer@du.edu (J.D. Moyer).
Or, are we quite close to achieving these SDGs and only need to
make a few critical policy choices to get us to the right path? Or,
are we badly off track to achieve the SDGs with few options to
bridge the gap between current levels and indicator goals?
The objective of this study is to evaluate a sub-set of human
development related SDGs at the national level in 2015 and then
to project related indicators to 2030 using a baseline scenario in
an integrated assessment model. We analyze nine human develop-
ment related indicators across eight targets for six goals. These
nine indicators represent multiple dimensions of human develop-
ment, touching on education, health, infrastructure, and economic
development. See Table 1 for an overview of the relationship
between goals, targets, indicators, variables, and target values used
here.
We begin by estimating the current state of affairs across the
following indicators: extreme poverty, hunger, underweight chil-
dren, childhood mortality, primary school completion, lower-
secondary school completion, access to safe water, access to
improved sanitation, and access to electricity. The indicators cov-
ered in this research do not include all human development related
measures in the SDGs. But the list is broadly representative of
human development related SDGs and covers issues in an inte-
grated framework that includes education, health, infrastructure,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104749
0305-750X/Ó 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
2 J.D. Moyer, S. Hedden / World Development 127 (2020) 104749

Table 1
SDG goals, targets, and indicators evaluated in this paper.

Goal Target Indicator Variable Target Historical

Value data source
1: End poverty in all 1.1: By 2030 eradicate extreme 1.1.1: Proportion of population % of the population living on less Below 3% World Bank,
its forms poverty for all people everywhere below the international poverty than $1.90 a day at 2011 of total Development
everywhere line, by sex, age, employment international prices population Research
status and geographical location Group
(urban/rural)
2: End hunger, 2.1: By 2030 end hunger and 2.1.1: Prevalence of % of population whose food Below 3% FAO
achieve food ensure access by all people in undernourishment intake is insufficient to meet of total
security, improve particular the poor and people in dietary requirements population
nutrition and vulnerable situations, including continuously
promote infants, to safe, nutritious and
sustainable sufficient food all year round
agriculture
2: End hunger, 2.2: By 2030, end all forms of 2.2.1: Prevalence of stunting % of children under 5 whose Below 3% WHO, Child
achieve food malnutrition including achieving, (height for age <-2 standard weight for age is more than two of total Growth and
security, improve by 2025, the internationally agreed deviation from the median of standard deviations below the population Malnutrition
nutrition and targets on stunting and wasting in World Health Organization Growth median for the international
promote children under 5 years of age, and Standards) among children under reference population ages 0–
sustainable address the nutritional needs of 5 years of age, by type (wasting and 59 months
agriculture adolescent girls, pregnant and overweight)
lactating women, and old people
3: Ensure health lives 3.2: By 2030, end preventable 3.2.1: Under-five mortality rate The probability of a child born in Less than UN Inter-
and promote well- deaths of newborns and children a specific year dying before or equal to Agency Group
being for all at all under 5 years of age, with all reaching the age of 5 years, 25 deaths for Child
ages. countries with all countries aiming expressed per 1000 live births per 1000 Mortality
to reduce neonatal mortality to at live births Estimation
least as low as 12 per 1000 live
births and under-5 mortality to at
least as low as 25 per 1000 live
births
4: Ensure inclusive 4.1: By 2030 ensure that all girls 4.1.1: Proportion of children and The number of students Greater UNESCO
and equitable and boys complete free, equitable young people: (a) in grades 2/3; (b) successfully completing the last than 97% Institute for
quality education and quality primary and secondary at the end of primary; and at the year of primary school in a given Statistics
and promote education leading to relevant and end of lower secondary achieving year, divided by the number of (UIS)
lifelong learning effective learning outcomes at least a minimum proficiency graduate age
opportunities for level in (i) reading and (ii)
all mathematics, by sex
4: Ensure inclusive 4.1: By 2030 ensure that all girls 4.1.1: Proportion of children and The number of students Greater UNESCO
and equitable and boys complete free, equitable young people: (a) in grades 2/3; (b) successfully completing the last than 97% Institute for
quality education and quality primary and secondary at the end of primary; and at the year of lower secondary school in Statistics
and promote education leading to relevant and end of lower secondary achieving a given year, divided by the (UIS)
lifelong learning effective learning outcomes at least a minimum proficiency number of graduate age
opportunities for level in (i) reading and (ii)
all mathematics, by sex
6: Ensure availability 6.1: By 2030 achieve universal and 6.1.1: Proportion of population % of population with access to an Greater WHO/UNICEF
and sustainable equitable access to safe and using safely managed drinking ‘improved’ water source than 97% Joint
management of affordable drinking water for all water services Monitoring
water and Programme
sanitation for all
6: Ensure availability 6.2: By 2030, achieve access to 6.2.1: Proportion of population % of population with access to Greater WHO/UNICEF
and sustainable adequate and equitable sanitation using safely managed sanitation sanitation services than 97% Joint
management of and hygiene for all and end open services, including a hand-washing Monitoring
water and defecation, paying special attention facility with soap and water Programme
sanitation for all to the needs of women and girls in
vulnerable situations
7: Ensure access to 7.1: By 2030 ensure universal 7.1.1: Proportion of population % of the population with access to Greater World Bank’s
affordable, reliable, access to affordable, reliable, and with access to electricity electricity than 97% WDI
and sustainable modern energy services
energy for all

and economic development targets, sometimes for specific age
groups. These indicators were chosen both because of their data
coverage and because they are included within the International
Futures (IFs) model (see ‘modeling approach’ below).
We find that, by 2015, 43.2% of country-indicators had already
reached target values. Along a middle-of-the-road development
scenario, the percent of target values met is projected to increase
to 53.8% by 2030. Regionally, Africa lags most significantly behind
in its achievement of the SDGs, with a lower percent of countries
achieving target values explored here by 2030 than any other
region. Across issue areas, progress toward target values for
extreme poverty, primary school completion, access to safe water,
and access to electricity is projected to be most rapid, while target
values for underweight children, child mortality, lower secondary
school completion, and access to safe sanitation are approached
most slowly. This research demonstrates that, along a middle-of-
the-road development scenario, only limited progress towards
achieving human development related SDGs is likely.
 J.D. Moyer, S. Hedden / World Development 127 (2020) 104749
2. Projecting development
2.1. Background literature
Previous research has projected variables typically related to
focused subsets of SDG indicators such as poverty (Burt, Hughes,
& Milante, 2014; Chandy, Ledlie, & Penciakova, 2013; Edward &
Sumner, 2013; Hughes et al., 2009; Milante, Hughes, & Burt,
2016; Ravallion, 2013; World Bank, 2015) hunger, land, and nutri-
tion (FAO, 2017b; Popp et al., 2017) energy and electricity access
(Dagnachew et al., 2017; IEA, 2017; Lucas et al., 2015; Lucas,
Dagnachew, & Hof, 2017), outdoor air pollution (IEA, 2017;
Klimont et al., 2017; Stohl et al., 2015) indoor air pollution
(Kuhn, Rothman, Turner, Solórzano, & Hughes, 2016) child mortal-
ity (Liu et al., 2015, 2016; Mathers & Loncar, 2006; Murray, Laakso,
Shibuya, Hill, & Lopez, 2007; You et al., 2015), educational attain-
ment (Dickson, Hughes, & Irfan, 2010; Dickson, Hughes, & Irfan,
2016; Kc et al., 2010; Lutz, Butz, & Samir, 2017; Lutz & Samir,
2013), education enrollment or graduation rates (Dickson,
Hughes, & Irfan, 2010; Dickson et al., 2016), and access to water
and sanitation (Anand, 2006; Hanasaki et al., 2013; Rothman,
Irfan, Margolese-Malin, Hughes, & Moyer, 2014).
Some studies have projected SDG achievement in interacting
issue areas such as in the fields of health (Fullman et al., 2017;
González-Pier et al., 2016; Nicolai, Hoy, Berliner, & Aedy, 2015)
and the environment (van Vuuren et al., 2015b, 2017). With excep-
tions such as the country-specific Global Burden of Disease (GBD)
Study (Fullman et al., 2017), projections of both individual and
interacting SDG variables are almost always at the regional or even
global level, making it impossible to gauge the likelihood of
country-level SDG achievement.
Others have attempted to assess the current state of multiple
SDG achievement at the country level through data gathering
and monitoring and evaluation. These include the composite SDG
Index created by Bertelsmann Stiftung and the Sustainable Devel-
opment Solutions Network (Sachs et al., 2018). Researchers have
scored countries’ past and current progress toward targets, often
focusing on specific groups of targets or countries (Golding et al.,
2017; Lim et al., 2016; WHO, 2017b; World Bank, 2017).
This manuscript adds to SDG research by projecting likely
country-level progress on a significant subset of interacting human
development related SDG targets across multiple development
systems, including poverty, education, health and the environ-
ment. The findings can be compared to country level findings
where available and aggregated into regional level findings. The
variables studied in this report measure human development and
are included because of data availability and coverage within the
IFs model.
Baseline scenarios are useful for setting reasonable expectations
for the development of a system and are an important starting
point for strategic planning. It is only with established baselines
that alternative scenario analysis becomes possible and various
methods can frame uncertainty and explore plausible alternatives.
At their most basic, methodologies for determining baselines can
involve simple extrapolations of historical variables. More complex
baselines can incorporate dynamic and non-linear relationships
that capture structural transformations to better understand both
continuity and change.
One set of scenarios in widespread use is the Shared Socio-
Economic Pathways (SSPs) (O’Neill et al., 2014). The SSPs include
five scenarios that frame potential global development trajectories
originally developed to capture the uncertainties around climate
change adaptation and mitigation and allow for cross-model col-
laboration. While the SSPs were not created to assess the SDGs
specifically, they do provide a useful set of baselines for SDG eval-
uation as they provide cross-cutting projections of human, natural,
3
and social development and were created as, ‘‘reference pathways
describing plausible alternative trends in the evolution of society
and ecosystems” (O’Neill et al., 2014, 387).
Studies using the SSPs have ranged across many issue areas
including the environment (Hanasaki et al., 2013; Hasegawa,
Fujimori, Takahashi, & Masui, 2015), land use (Popp et al., 2017),
hunger (Hasegawa et al., 2015), levels of conflict (Hegre et al.,
2016), and poverty (Campagnolo & Davide, 2017; Hallegatte &
Rozenberg, 2017). SSPs have been used to situate regional scenar-
ios within a global context (Mason-Droz et al., 2016; Palazzo et al.,
2017). SSP2, the scenario used as a baseline in this paper, assumes
moderate constraints mitigating and adapting to climate change
and represents a middle-of-the-road development path where
future trends are largely consistent with recent historical trends.
This scenario is initialized by taking published forecast series
across key variables and making them exogenous to the IFs model
(van Vuuren et al., 2017; Jiang & O’Neill, 2017; KC & Lutz, 2017).
2.2. Modeling approach
We use the IFs forecasting system to project the variables corre-
sponding to each SDG indicator (Table 1). We chose this model
based on its accessibility, breadth of human development sector
representation, level of integration, and its ability to produce coun-
try level forecasts. IFs can be used to evaluate a range of SDG indi-
cators, and is one of few public IAMs that can assess SDG
achievement at the country level (Allen, Graciela, & Wiedmann,
2016; Millennium Institute, 2017; The World Bank, 2018b). The
IFs tool forecasts hundreds of interacting variables across human,
social, and natural system dimensions for 186 countries. Projec-
tions created by others projecting the SSP related indicators can
be exogenously used to drive the IFs model which producing a
forecast with internal logical consistency across multiple dimen-
sions of human development (see Appendix A for a description of
the exogenous series used in this analysis). The tool has been
widely used previously in academic and policy publication
(Hughes, 2016, 2019; Joshi, Hughes, & Sisk, 2015; Moyer, Porter,
Johnson, Moyer, & Bohl, 2015; Moyer & Bohl, 2018). See Fig. 1 for
an overview of the systems represented in IFs.
IFs includes a demographic model representing age-sex cohort
structures and including endogenized representations of fertility,
mortality, and migration (Bohl, Hughes, & Johnson, 2016). The eco-
nomic model is equilibrium seeking and represents six sectors
with labor by skill-level; it endogenizes drivers of productivity
from across human, social, and physical systems, tied together in
a social accounting matrix (Hughes, 2007; Hughes et al. 2009).
IFs contains a health model differentiating mortality and morbidity
into 15 types for 22 age-sex cohorts, uniquely driven by a combi-
nation of immediate or ‘proximate’ variables and underlying or
‘distal’ forces (Hughes, Kuhn, Peterson, Rothman, & Solórzano,
2011; Mathers & Loncar, 2006).
The education model tracks student flows across levels of edu-
cation from primary through tertiary, driven by the government
finance, economic, and demographic models (Dickson, Hughes, &
Irfan, 2010; Dickson et al., 2016); it represents the stock of adult
education as the population ages. The infrastructure model repre-
sents supply and demand of roads, water, sanitation, information
communication technology, and electricity (Rothman et al.,
2014). Governance is represented through measurements of secu-
rity, capacity, and inclusion (Hughes, Joshi, Moyer, Sisk, &
Solórzano, 2014). IFs represents constraints on and trade-offs
within investment in human development through a government
finance module that relies on revenue generation through taxation
and foreign aid and that details spending and transfer payments. A
social accounting matrix integrates financial flows across eco-
nomic, government finance, and other models. Gender is a
4 J.D. Moyer, S. Hedden / World Development 127 (2020) 104749
Fig. 1. Representation of major model blocks within the International Futures (IFs)
model.
cross-cutting issue represented in educational, health, and infras-
tructure access as well as participation in the broader economy.
The interaction across countries is represented through interna-
tional flows of trade, foreign direct investment, aid, debt, migra-
tion, and the threat of international conflict (Moyer, 2012).
These human systems are connected to natural systems as well.
IFs represents production, trade and use of multiple energy forms
(Hughes, Solórzano, & Rothman, 2014). Land use is represented
across five categories; crop, mean, and fish production are tied to
demand of both households and industry (Hedden et al., 2016;
Moyer & Firnhaber, 2012; Rothman, Hughes, & Narayan, 2017).
Carbon stocks in the atmosphere, interacting with ocean and forest
sinks, are driven by changing patterns of fossil fuel consumption
and then impact temperature and precipitation change at national
levels. Technology is important in essentially all models in IFs with
a combination of endogenous and exogenous representations.
This research implements SSP2 into IFs to determine whether
countries are on track to achieve the selected SDG indicators by
2030 (the SDG time horizon). This is done by taking exogenous
indicators from the SSP database and imposing them on the IFs tool
(see Appendix A for a list of the series taken from the SSP database
and used in IFs to create SSP2). Some of the SDG indicators evalu-
ated here directly connect to SSP series. Examples include GDP per
capita, a driver of the IFs poverty forecasts. For other variables,
elaborations of the SSPs are related to, but provide less or little
guidance with respect to the calculations of the indicators. For
example, SSP quantifications exist for adult educational attain-
ment, but not for primary and secondary completion rates. This
means there are potential inconsistencies between the SSP repre-
sentations and the IFs model outputs, a challenging issue when
building exogenous assumptions into a heavily endogenized
model.
The sections below describe how the nine variables (see Table 1)
explored in this paper are operationalized within the IFs model.
While these nine indicators are only a small subset of the total
number of indicators in the SDG framework, they do represent a
broad set of human development measures, capturing aspects of
health, economic development and distribution, education, infras-
tructure, etc. These specific indicators were chosen both because of
their data coverage and because they can be projected using IFs.
Each of these indicators has a formal corresponding dataset
assigned to it by the UNDP (see Table 1) which is used to initialize
the value in the IFs model.
2.3. Extreme poverty
SDG 1 is the end of poverty ‘‘in all its forms everywhere.” For
this study, we focus on Target 1.1, the eradication of extreme pov-
erty, one indicator for which is the percentage of people living on
less than $1.90 per day.
Poverty levels in IFs are calculated as a function of average
income and its distribution. Income is assumed to have a lognor-
mal distribution (that the natural log of income is normally
distributed), which is a good approximation of empirical distribu-
tions of income for most countries (Bourguignon, 2004; Eicher and
Turnovsky, 2003). More specifically, IFs projects poverty as a func-
tion of per capita consumption and the distribution of income,
measured using the Gini coefficient (Hughes, 2015).
Household consumption per capita is measured in 2011 USD at
PPP. Data on poverty used to initialize projections for poverty
levels by country and to evaluate 2015 country level achievement
come from the World Bank’s Poverty headcount ratio at $1.90 a day
as a percent of the population, which is also the UN’s suggested
source to use for benchmarking (UNDESA, 2017; World Bank,
2018).
2.4. Undernourishment and underweight children
SDG 2 aims to eliminate hunger and poor nutrition. For this
paper we look at two targets with two distinct indicators (Table 1):
2.1.1, the population-wide prevalence of undernourishment (hun-
ger) and 2.2.2, the prevalence of underweight children. Hunger
(2.1.1) is a function of available and consumed calories. Child mal-
nutrition (2.2.2) is also driven by calories, as well as by access to
clean water and sanitation (which implicitly represents the poten-
tial for diarrhea to limit the ability to utilize calories consumed).
2.5. Population undernourishment (hunger)
The IFs projection of hunger is driven by caloric availability,
which is driven by variables from the agricultural and economic
models. The agriculture model is partial equilibrium and uses
stocks (e.g., food stores) to equilibrate between supply (production
plus imports less exports) and demand, generating change in rela-
tive price. Calorie demand per capita (from crops, meat, and fish), is
affected by both income and food price.
Data to initialize the prevalence of hunger, agricultural demand
for crops, meat, and fish, calories per capita per day come from the
Food and Agriculture Organization (2017a) the official data com-
piler for SDG indicator 2.1.1 (UNDESA, 2017). Data for household
income for the unskilled portion of the labor force come from the
Global Trade Analysis Project at Purdue University (2018).
2.6. Underweight children
Poor access to calories and/or environmental conditions that
make it difficult to absorb available calories can leave people
chronically malnourished. For this indicator we forecast under-
weight children, defined as, ‘‘the percentage of children under
age 5 whose weight for age is more than two standard deviations
 J.D. Moyer, S. Hedden / World Development 127 (2020) 104749
below the median for the international reference population ages
0–59 months,” (World Bank, 2018). There are few other forecasts
for prevalence of underweight children (IFPRI, 2016).
The proximate, or more immediate drivers of underweight chil-
dren are calories per capita, access to safe water (either piped or
‘improved’), and access to safe sanitation (either shared or ‘im-
proved’). This formulation of drivers comes from the WHO’s Global
Burden of Disease project (GBD) methodology and their empirical
risk factors of underweight children (Mathers & Loncar, 2006;
Murray & Lopez, 1996). The data to initialize the IFs projections
of underweight children (which could be used to evaluate 2015
country level achievement), come from the World Bank’s World
Development Indicators (World Bank, 2018) which is a harmo-
nized dataset based on UNICEF, WHO and World Bank data, the
three official compilers of the data to be used to evaluate SDG indi-
cator 2.2.2 (UNDESA, 2017).
2.7. Child mortality
The aim of SDG 3 is to ‘‘ensure healthy lives and promote well-
being for all at all ages.” To assess SDG 3, we focus on the second
target, under-five mortality, and specifically indicator 3.2.1 or the
likelihood of death before 5 years of age (UNDESA, 2017).
Child mortality from all 15 types of mortality and morbidity in
IFs is projected using both the demographics model and the health
model. The health model uses and extends the methodology first
developed by the WHO’s Global Burden of Disease project
(Hughes et al., 2011; Mathers & Loncar, 2006). This methodology
uses both distal (deep, long-term and structural) drivers and prox-
imate (based on social patterns and behaviors) drivers to project 15
types of mortality and morbidity for each age-sex cohort. Key distal
drivers provide a basic calculation of mortality by age, sex, cause,
and country are adult education, income (using GDP per capita as
a proxy), and technological progress. Proximate drivers, then,
adjust mortality from specific causes of population fractions. For
example with respect to child mortality, the communicable disease
burden is adjusted using calculations of the prevalence of under-
weight children, safe water, and sanitation access rates. The prob-
ability that a person survives to any given age is calculated using
the mortality rates for each age-sex cohort.
The data to initialize the IFs projections of child mortality (also
used to evaluate 2015 country level achievement in this paper),
come from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators
(World Bank, 2018) which is a harmonized dataset based on UNI-
CEF, WHO, World Bank and UNDESA data. UNICEF is the official
compiler of the data to be used to evaluate SDG indicator 3.2.1
(UNDESA, 2017).
2.8. Education
SDG 4 intends to, ‘‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality educa-
tion and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all,” and target
4.1 is: ‘‘by 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equi-
table and quality primary and secondary education leading to rel-
evant and effective learning outcomes,” (UNDESA, 2017). Here we
focus on primary school completion (the portion of students who
graduate from primary school over the total number of age appro-
priate students) and lower secondary school completion (the por-
tion of students who graduate from lower secondary school over
the total number of age appropriate students).
The education model in IFs projects gender and country-specific
intake, enrollment, survival, and graduation rates for primary,
lower secondary, upper secondary, and tertiary education levels.
The education model is integrated with the demographic, gover-
nance, and economic models, using costs, public spending, and
population cohort size to project student flows. The level of educa-
5
tional attainment for young adults by sex is calculated as a func-
tion of these rates and carried with the adult population as it ages.
These data are initialized using data from UNESCO’s Institute for
Statistics (2018), the organization responsible for SDG indicator 4.1
and the official compiler of data to be used to evaluate SDG indica-
tor 4.1.
2.9. Access to safe water and sanitation
The ‘‘availability and sustainable management” of water and
sanitation is included in SDG 6. For this study, we focus on two
indicators representing two targets under this goal: 6.1.1, ‘‘propor-
tion of the population using safely managed drinking water ser-
vices,” and 6.2.1, ‘‘proportion of population using safely managed
sanitation services, including a hand-washing facility with soap
and water” (UNDESA, 2017).
In IFs, access to water and sanitation is included in the infras-
tructure model, which is linked to the demographics, health, gov-
ernance, and economic models. IFs projects three access levels
for water (unimproved, other improved, and piped) and sanitation
(other unimproved, shared, improved), mirroring the ‘ladder’
approach taken by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme
for Water Supply and Sanitation (WHO, 2017a).
To project the portion of the population with access to each
level, IFs uses a nominal logistic equation with the following inde-
pendent variables: average years of education for the adult popu-
lation (age 25 and older), GDP per capita (PPP), portion of the
population living in extreme poverty, and total government health
expenditures as a portion of GDP (Rothman & Ifran, 2013; Rothman
et al., 2014).
All of the data used to initialize the projections of access to
water and sanitation and evaluate 2015 country level achievement
come from the WHO/UNICEF’s Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP)
data base (WHO/UNICEF, 2018). UNICEF and WHO are the organi-
zations responsible for these SDG variables and the JMP database is
to be used to evaluate SDG indicator achievement for 6.1.1 and
6.2.1 (UNDESA, 2017).
2.10. Electricity
SDG 7 aims to ensure ‘‘access to affordable, reliable, sustainable
and modern energy for all.” For this paper we focus on indicator
7.1.1, the ‘‘proportion of population with access to electricity”
(UNDESA, 2017).
Electricity access is forecast for urban and rural populations,
each as a logistic function with the following independent vari-
ables: portion of the population living in extreme poverty and gov-
ernment effectiveness using the World Bank WGI scale (Rothman
& Ifran, 2013; Rothman et al., 2014).
The data for the IFs projections of access to electricity and used
to evaluate 2015 country level achievement in this paper, come
from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (World
Bank, 2018) which is the official data compiler of SDG indicator
7.1.1 (UNDESA, 2017).
3. Results
The SSP2 scenario represents a moderately optimistic world in
which economies grow and low-income countries converge
towards high-income countries, HDI improves, poverty declines,
and conflict reduces. Using IIASA GDP projections for SSP2, for
example, low-income economies are projected to grow at an aver-
age annual rate to 2030 of 6.1% (Dellink, Chateau, Lanzi, & Magné,
2017). That greatly exceeds the projected growth of 2.1% in high-
income countries.
6 J.D. Moyer, S. Hedden / World Development 127 (2020) 104749
However, this moderately optimistic scenario leads to only lim-
ited progress towards achieving human development related SDGs.
The total number of country-indicators (of the nine evaluated here
for 186 countries) projected to reach target values is projected to
increase from 713 (43%) in 2015 to 891 (54%) by 2030. In 2015,
27% of countries do not achieve any the nine target values explored
here, and nine percent of countries achieve all targets. By 2030,
15% of countries are projected to not achieve any SDG explored
here, with 17% of countries achieving all nine target values. (See
Appendix B for a break-down of target value achievement by
region and by indicator.)
Achievement varies considerably across indicator targets. Fig. 2
shows the percent of countries that achieve SDG targets across
variables in 2015 and 2030. Some indicators are projected to
improve relatively rapidly: the primary school completion target
is reached in 76% of countries (an increase of 15 percentage points)
and access to improved water is achieved in 72% of countries (an
increase of 24 percentage points). Extreme poverty eradication tar-
gets are achieved in 67 percent of countries, growing by 16 per-
centage points relative to 2015.
Some variables show significant increase in country-
achievement, though starting from a low base. For example, access
to safe sanitation was only achieved in 27% of countries in 2015
and grows to 43.5% of countries by 2030. Completion of lower-
secondary education targets were achieved in 20% of countries in
2015, increasing to 35% of countries by 2030.
Less progress is made with achieving targets in other variables.
Child mortality target values are achieved in 10.8% more countries
between 2015 and 2030. Electricity access targets are also achieved
in only seven percent more countries by 2030. Underweight
children targets are only achieved in an additional 6.5% of coun-
tries, the variable explored here with the least improvement.
Fig. 2. Percent of countries achieving selected SDG indicator targets in 2015, 2030.
Undernourishment targets are only projected to be achieved in
only two countries.
The hard-to-achieve SDG indictors explored in this study have
three characteristics. First, some reflect transitions that occur at a
later stage in a development process. Lower secondary completion
is a clear example of this, as primary completion is a necessary pre-
condition. Second, some reflect development preferences driven by
human priorities. For example, sanitation access tends to occur
after safe water access because people prioritize the latter over
the former. A third characteristic is that some indicators face
development challenges that are structural, such as conflict and
poor governance. These make high fertility rates difficult to lower,
affecting indicators such as child health. Similarly, persistent prob-
lems of child mortality, undernutrition, and underweight children
are driven by weaknesses in food-distribution-governance systems
that are pernicious and that impact the most vulnerable people,
those with little voice or purchasing power. Without dramatic pol-
icy interventions (something not represented in a middle-of-the-
road scenario) development objectives on such variables cannot
be achieved.
Patterns of SDG achievement vary significantly by region. Figs. 3
and 4 show the percentage of countries per region that achieve the
nine SDG indicator targets in 2015 and 2030. In an SSP2 scenario,
some SDGs will be widely achieved in some regions. Latin America
and Caribbean is projected to significantly increase access to water,
achieve primary school completion, and improve child mortality
rates in many countries. Asia is also poised to improve access to
water, complete primary school targets, and see many countries
achieve the poverty target. However, other regions are expected
to lag significantly behind. For example, by 2030, Africa is pro-
jected to have achieved the least number of SDG targets at a
national level of all regions evaluated.
 J.D. Moyer, S. Hedden / World Development 127 (2020) 104749 7

Fig. 3. Percent of countries achieving SDG by region and indicator, 2015.

Fig. 4. Percent of countries achieving SDG by region and indicator, 2030.

8 J.D. Moyer, S. Hedden / World Development 127 (2020) 104749

Fig. 5. Number of countries by region not achieving selected SDGs in 2030.

Fig. 5 shows the number of countries by region that do not
achieve each of the nine target goals explored here. Across each
of these indicators, Africa is consistently the largest region by
country-count projected to not achieve the SDG targets, followed
by Asia. The best performing target indicator (primary school com-
pletion) still show 35 African countries without achievement by
2030.
Of the 186 countries explored in this paper, 28 Most Vulnerable
Countries (MVCs) do not achieve any of the target indicators (26 of
these are sub-Saharan). Many of these MVCs are characterized by
conflict – 13 are on the 2018 harmonized list of fragile states from
the World Bank and eight have either a UN or regional peacekeep-
ing mission (The World Bank, 2018a). They represent the most
acute development challenges for the international aid commu-
nity. To further understand these countries facing acute develop-
ment challenges we grouped the 186 countries into categories
based on the number of human development related SDGs that
they achieve in a middle-of-the-road scenario. See Table 2, where
the 28 MVCs are represented in the ‘‘0” column (zero SDG targets
achieved in 2030), with countries achieving more target values
moving to the right.
MVCs include over 751 million people in 2015, growing to 1055
million by 2030. While our modeling is focused on the 2030 hori-
zon, it is worth noting that these countries are projected to keep
growing, more than doubling in size relative to today to 1721 mil-
lion by 2050. As a share of global population, MVCs are projected to

Table 2
Characteristics of country groupings by number of SDGs achieved by 2030.

Number of SDG indicators achieved by 2030 out of nine possible

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
2015 Population (million) 751 213 197 326 183 403 1546 729 1792 1237
2030 1055 283 225 406 211 461 1803 813 1832 1326
2015 Population under 15 (million) 335 89 62 111 54 118 437 183 318 223
2030 413 101 64 121 49 114 409 179 301 220
2015 GDP (billion MER $) $985 $247 $697 $639 $274 $2093 $4215 $5466 $20,482 $45,401
2030 $3007 $781 $1727 $1610 $851 $5944 $12,518 $11,477 $47,015 $65,021
2015 GDP per capita (thousand PPP $) $3 $3 $7 $6 $4 $11 $7 $12 $17 $38
2030 $5 $5 $12 $9 $8 $21 $13 $20 $34 $50
2015 Life Expectancy (years) 59.1 63.4 63.4 67.6 72.5 70.3 69.3 75.0 76.6 78.8
2030 57.7 62.5 64.3 67.1 75.2 72.4 72.9 77.6 80.0 82.1
2015 Fertility Rate (children) 5.3 4.4 3.0 3.3 2.2 2.5 2.3 2.1 1.7 1.8
2030 4.1 3.2 2.5 2.7 1.9 2.2 2.0 1.9 1.7 1.8
2015 Education Years (age 15 + ) 5.0 5.0 6.9 6.6 6.6 8.0 7.3 7.8 8.6 11.5
2030 6.5 6.1 8.0 8.1 8.0 9.2 8.9 8.9 9.6 12.0
2015 Calories per capita 2356 2334 2786 2527 2492 2779 2582 3145 3142 3472
2030 2674 2678 3113 2819 2860 3116 2943 3418 3500 3635
Number of countries 28 14 12 7 11 14 17 17 28 38
 J.D. Moyer, S. Hedden / World Development 127 (2020) 104749
shift from 10.2 percent today to 17.8 percent by 2050. This demo-
graphic growth is driven by the highest fertility rates of any of the
nine groupings in Table 2, with over 5.3 children per woman (fore-
cast to decline to 4.1 by 2030). Currently over 335 million people
under the age of 15 live in MVCs with that number forecast to grow
to 413 million (representing 22.5 percent of all youth) by 2030.
Across other development indicators MVCs have limited health,
education, and economic development. In addition, they are also
deeply reliant on foreign aid, with 29.9 percent of government rev-
enue coming from the international community (the group of
countries that achieve only one SDG is also heavily reliant on for-
eign aid with 22.7 percent of government revenue originating from
the international aid community).
Conversely, there are also a large number of countries that have
already achieved all of these nine targets in 2015. Across the nine
indicators explored here, between 20 and 60 percent of countries
have achieved these targets already in 2015. This speaks to the lim-
ited nature of the SDGs ‘‘universal” application: if most countries
have achieved the global target in the base year, universal targets
should probably be eschewed in favor of relative targets. An alter-
native approach for a universal development framework using rel-
ative targets could be approached in various ways, either by
making the specific target indicators contingent on country context
or making achievement thresholds contingent on level of
development.
4. Discussion
Projecting the future is always a challenge and this exercise is
not meant to be a prediction of a deterministic future. However,
instead of trying to foretell what the future is likely to hold, models
should be used to better understand how the world around us is
unfolding given the path we seem to be on. From that understand-
ing policy should be made that considers the past, present, and
possible future trajectories of sustainable human development.
There are many ways to frame the uncertainty and test the reli-
ability of projections including longitudinal statistical techniques,
scenario analysis, historical forecasting, and qualitative analysis.
In this paper we have not explicitly framed the uncertainty around
these projections because many of them have been driven by an
extant scenario that shaped inputs to the IFs platform. Future work
should be done to better frame the uncertainty around such a base-
line scenario that dynamically unfolds along a middle-of-the-road
pathway. Future research could, for instance, also focus on SDG
achievement across other SSPs.
And some research has already been completed in this space,
including an assessment of the required interventions to bring
development on track to achieve the SDGs. For example, one alter-
native scenario development approach was put forward in the
‘‘Roads to Rio+20”, which focused on three alternative policy path-
ways for achieving the SDGs (van Vuuren et al., 2015a; Moyer &
Bohl, 2018). This research analyzed the level of intervention
required to achieve SDGs across scenario paths representing tech-
nology, decentralized governance and reduced individual
consumption.
9
The IFs tool is a deeply integrated quantitative modeling frame-
work. This has both benefits and costs. The main advantage is that
it must include equilibrating and accounting systems, which create
a space for many variables to be considered in the calculation of an
output while retaining dynamism and realism. A disadvantage,
however, is that the large number of interacting variables can
appear to be a ‘‘black box” because the extensiveness of model
assumptions and interacting variables, while adding that realism,
can make interpretation difficult. A fuller assessment of trade-
offs across modeling methodologies would be another valuable
research project.
A second main benefit of the IFs tool is that it allows for analysis
at the country level. Most integrated assessment models are regio-
nal or global. While such aggregation can be useful for projecting
development in some natural systems – particularly global scale
environmental problems, such as climate change - it may also
‘‘wash-out” the country-level heterogeneity within regions.
Additional research exploring trade-offs in the unit of analysis
used in modeling exercises would also be a valuable research
endeavor.
5. Conclusion
Along a middle-of-the-road development path characterized by
improvements in agricultural, demographic, economic, education,
energy, environmental, governance, health, infrastructure, and
technology variables, the world is not on track to achieve human
development related SDGs by 2030. The regional disparity in
achievement is significant. In particular, in Africa the target values
are achieved in only nine percent of countries for sanitation, seven
percent for lower-secondary completion, and five percent for
underweight children indicators.
The geographic focus used to assess prospects for SDG achieve-
ment matters. When explored on a global basis (summing up pop-
ulations across countries), we are on track to achieve two of the
SDG indicator target values evaluated in this report: primary
school completion and child mortality. This is a positive develop-
ment. However, the SDGs were developed on a country basis and
achievement should be evaluated in those terms as well. If so, it
becomes clear that alternative pathways of development forward
are required to achieve these global targets.
The authors of this manuscript are unaware of any conflict of
interest regarding this research.
The authors would like to thank the journal editors and three
anonymous reviewers for helpful feedback, along with additional
researchers who provided useful comments on previous versions
of the document, including Detlef VanVuuren, James Ward, and
Paul Lucas. In addition, we would like to thank the team of
researchers who develop and maintain the International Futures
modeling platform including Barry Hughes (founder), Jose Solor-
zano, Mohammod Irfan, Mickey Rafa, David Bohl, Brian O’Neill,
Kanishka Narayan, Brendan Mapes, Elizabeth Bremmer, Jake Dub-
bert, Taylor Hannah, and Douglas Pederson. In addition, we
would like to thank Fred Pardee for his sustained support of this
work.
10
Appendix A. SSP2 exogenous forecast series used in this analysis
Variable
Population in millions
Total number of births in
millions
Total number of deaths in
millions
Total fertility rate (births per
woman)
Urban Population as a
percent of total population
GDP per capita at PPP
(Current international
dollars at 2011 PPP)
Migration rate (net) as a
percent of the population
Appendix B. Percent of countries by region and target that
achieve SDG target values for indicators explored here in 2015
and 2030.
J.D. Moyer, S. Hedden / World Development 127 (2020) 104749
Source for Publication describing Summary of assumptions and variable values
exogenous construction of dataset
dataset for SSPs
IIASA (KC & Lutz, 2017) SSP2 assumes a medium level of mortality, fertility,
education and migration across all countries. These
assumptions are similar to those of UN’s Medium variant
used in the World Population Prospects. Globally, population
increases from 7.37 million in 2015 to 9.33 million by 2050
and reaches a value of 9.2 million by 2100
IIASA (KC & Lutz, 2017) SSP2 assumes a medium level of mortality, fertility,
education and migration across all countries. These
assumptions are similar to those of UN’s Medium variant
used in the World Population Prospects. Globally, births
decrease from 141 million in 2015 to 122 million in 2050
and finally reach 83 million by 2100
IIASA (KC & Lutz, 2017) SSP2 assumes a medium level of mortality, fertility,
education and migration across all countries. These
assumptions are similar to those of UN’s Medium variant
used in the World Population Prospects. Globally, deaths
increase from 57 million in 2015 to 92 million in 2050 and
finally reach 112 million by 2100.
IIASA (Samir KC & Lutz, 2017) SSP2 assumes a medium level of mortality, fertility,
education and migration across all countries. These
assumptions are similar to those of UN’s Medium variant
used in the World Population Prospects. Globally, the total
fertility rate decreases from 2.48 births per woman in 2015
to 2 births per woman in 2050 to 1.76 births per woman in
2100
NCAR (Jiang & O’Neill, 2017) This pathway assumes an extension of current trends in
urbanization in all parts of the world, along with similar
middle of the road assumptions about population growth,
technological change, and economic growth. High income
countries continue their practices in urban development;
developing countries generally follow the historical
urbanization experiences of the more developed countries.
Urban population as a percent of total population increases
from 53.7 percent in 2015 to 67.4 percent in 2050 and
reaches 79.2 percent by 2100
OECD (Dellink et al., 2017) SSP2 assumes a medium level of growth in total factor
productivity (TFP) for the most developed countries (the
frontier) and a medium speed of convergence towards the
frontier. GDP per capita increases from 14 thousand USD in
2015 to 34 thousand USD in 2050 and reaches a value of 86
thousand USD by 2100.
IIASA (KC & Lutz, 2017) SSP2 assumes a medium level of mortality, fertility,
education and migration across all countries. These
assumptions are similar to those of UN’s Medium variant
used in the World Population Prospects. Globally, population
increases from 7.37 million in 2015 to 9.33 million by 2050
and reaches a value of 9.2 million by 2100
Appendix C. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104749.
 J.D. Moyer, S. Hedden / World Development 127 (2020) 104749 11

Fig. 6. Percent of countries within each region that have achieved each SDG target in 2015 and 2030.

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