Socio-economic and Demographic Aspects of Sustainable Development Goals: A Cross-Country Analysis

Abstract

The study examines the relationship between selected socio-economic and demographic indicators and overall Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) performance in eight East and South Asian countries: Bangladesh, China, India, Maldives, Mongolia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Balanced panel data covering 2005–2018 comprise 112 country-year observations. Five indicators are considered: adolescent fertility rate, under-five mortality rate, female-to-male labour-force participation rate, female-to-male mean years of education received, and unemployment rate. Stationarity is assessed using the Levin–Lin–Chu panel unit-root test, while model selection is guided by the Breusch–Pagan Lagrange Multiplier and Hausman tests. The fixed-effects model is subsequently used to estimate relationships with the overall SDG score. The results indicate statistically significant positive relationships for female-to-male labour-force participation and female-to-male mean years of education received, and statistically significant negative relationships for under-five mortality and unemployment. Adolescent fertility is statistically insignificant in the fixed-effects estimation. In addition, exponential-smoothing forecasts are used to examine projected country-level SDG progress through 2030. The forecasts indicate continued improvement in overall SDG scores, although progress remains uneven across the selected countries. Overall, the findings suggest that the selected gender, education, health, and employment indicators are associated with differences in SDG performance within the analysed sample, while country-specific conditions and forecast uncertainty warrant cautious interpretation.