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Global effects of progress towards Sustainable Development Goals on subjective well-being

Nature Sustainability volume 7, pages 360–367 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

As common pursuits of human society, subjective well-being (SWB) strongly depends on economic factors, and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasize promoting equilibrium between socio-economic development and environmental conservation. Therefore, trade-offs between narrowing existing progress differences across SDGs and improving SWB might exist, which could interfere with global policy-making for human development but remain unexplored. Here we investigate the changing effects of achieving balance across SDGs and other factors on SWB along the global sustainable development gradient. Results show that achieving balance across goals, rather than their average performance or per capita gross domestic product, is the primary factor supporting well-being in countries with poorly progressed SDGs. However, SWB in countries approaching fulfillment of sustainable development depends more on wealth rather than on achieving balance across SDGs. Given the trade-offs between economic development and poorly achieved goals (for example, SDG 13, Climate Action) in these countries, the strong dependence of well-being on wealth might impede the holistic achievement of the 17 goals. Overall, our study uncovers an essential but long-neglected subjective control factor in the global road map towards SDGs.

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Fig. 1: Changing partial correlations between SWB and SDG evenness or per capita GDP, along the MIS gradient.
Fig. 2: Sensitivity analysis of the changing partial correlations between SWB and SDG evenness or per capita GDP, along the MIS gradient.
Fig. 3: Changing partial correlations between SWB and SDG evenness or per capita GDP.

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Data availability

All data are available in Sustainable Development Report 2020 (https://www.sustainabledevelopment.report/reports/sustainable-development-report-2020/), except for each country’s per capita GDP in 2019, which was obtained from the International Monetary Fund (https://data.imf.org/). A source data file including all raw data used in this study and source data for figures and tables presented in the main article is also attached. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42001267 (Y.L.), 42041005 (Y.W.) and 42041007 (B.F.)), the International Partnership Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (121311KYSB20170004-04 (Y.W.)) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021T140655 (Y.L.)).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jianqing Du & Yanfen Wang

  2. Beijing Yanshan Earth Critical Zone National Research Station, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jianqing Du & Yanfen Wang

  3. School of Grassland Science, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China

    Yali Liu

  4. Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China

    Zhenci Xu

  5. Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen, China

    Zhenci Xu

  6. School of Economics and Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Hongbo Duan, Yi Hu & Jichang Dong

  7. College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

    Minghao Zhuang

  8. Institute of Science City Industry, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Qiao Wang

  9. State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Environment and Resources (TPESER), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yanfen Wang

  10. State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Bojie Fu

  11. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Bojie Fu

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  1. Jianqing Du
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Contributions

J. Du, Y.L. and Y.W. designed the research. Y.L. and J. Du analysed the data. J. Du wrote the paper with input from Y.L., Y.W. and B.F. Z.X., H.D., M.Z., Y.H., Q.W. and J. Dong provided comments on the paper. All authors reviewed the paper.

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Correspondence to Yali Liu or Yanfen Wang.

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Du, J., Liu, Y., Xu, Z. et al. Global effects of progress towards Sustainable Development Goals on subjective well-being. Nat Sustain 7, 360–367 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01270-5

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