Social clocks as instruments for measuring progress towards sustainable development goals

The objective of this article is the introduction of social time as a new concept for monitoring the progress towards the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs). Social time is generally measured with social clocks. They compare the socio-economic situation of a nation or another social actor with a real or virtual reference group and determine this way the actor’s temporal lead or lag as compared to this group. Due to the multitude of possible comparisons, social time can be multidimensional, discontinuous, and even reversible. After a general discussion of these properties, the concept is applied to the monitoring of the progress towards a predefined policy goal. In this special situation the reference group is represented by an ideal virtual actor, moving from a starting point to the mentioned policy goal. Finally, for illustrative purposes the article explores with the instruments of social clocks the progress of three Latin American countries (Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay) with regard to poverty, sanitation, and food security. It turns out, that all three countries were in 2020 behind the schedule set by SDGs of the United Nations.