Feasibility of nowcasting SDG indicators: a comprehensive survey
This addresses the problem of long publication lags in SDG indicators for policymakers and researchers, providing a resource to enable more timely progress tracking, but it is incremental as it surveys existing indicators rather than introducing new methods.
The paper conducted a comprehensive survey of 362 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators and sub-indicators to assess their feasibility for nowcasting, finding that 150 were highly likely suitable, 87 likely, and 125 unsuitable, with a case study on indicator 9.4.1 to illustrate the process.
The 2030 Agenda and accompanying Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are vital in guiding national and global policy. However, many of the SDG indicators used to measure progress toward those goals suffer from long publication lags. Nowcasting has the potential to address this problem and generate more timely estimates of those indicators. This paper provides resources for achieving that potential by 1) carrying out a comprehensive nowcasting feasibility survey of all SDG indicators to assess their potential to be nowcast, and 2) performing a case study of indicator 9.4.1 to illustrate and shed light on the process of performing a nowcasting exercise. There exist 231 SDG indicators, but due to only examining Tier 1 indicators and the fact that many indicators have multiple sub-indicators, 362 indicators and sub-indicators were eventually surveyed. Of those 362, 150 were found highly likely to be suitable candidates for nowcasting, 87 were found to be likely, and 125 were found to be unsuitable.