The maps, charts, and analyses in this Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 2017 are intended to present data trends and comparisons in an accessible and visually appealing way. Given the breadth and scope of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the editors have been selective, emphasizing issues considered key by experts in the World Bank’s Global Practices and Cross-Cutting Solution Areas.

The data draw on the World Development Indicators (WDI) database­—­the World Bank’s compilation of internationally comparable statistics about global development and the quality of people’s lives. For each of the 17 SDGs, relevant indicators have been chosen to illustrate important trends and challenges, and highlight measurement issues.

New indicators have been added to the WDI database to better reflect coverage of specific goals and targets. In some cases­—­for example, where country or temporal coverage is limited­—­supplementary data from other databases or published studies have been used. But for some targets, there may be no reliable data to use for comparisons between countries or to measure progress.

The primary international source of the data is provided in footnotes. Where indicators are available in the WDI database, the codes used to identify these indicators are given. This “CETS” code (the Catalog of Economic Time Series classification) can be used to quickly access each indicator and its metadata, using the format http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/<CETS>.

The 2017 Atlas uses two primary methods for classifying and aggregating countries and economies — by income (as defined for the World Bank’s 2017 fiscal year) and by region. These are presented in the maps on pages vi to ix.

For more information, including details on the structure of the coding scheme, the methodology, concepts and definitions, coverage, periodicity, development relevance of all WDI indicators, and the methods used for classifying countries for analytical purposes, please refer to http://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org.

The cutoff date for data is January 31, 2017.