Evolution of sustainability indicator worldwide: A study from the economic perspective based on the X-STATICO method

Sustainability is becoming an ever greater concern in society as it will affect future generations. Since the Brundtland Report defined the concept of sustainability in 1987, several different indices and indicators have been developed in this area. However, at present, there is no widely accepted indicator of sustainability. Some of the indicators currently used have been established by the OECD and the UN, among others, but the Sustainable Society Index (SSI), developed in 2006, covers three aspects: economic, social and environmental (Van de Kerk and Manuel, 2012). With regard to the SSI, the objective of this study was to analyze the evolution of its indicators over the period 2006-2012. In addition, we consider the evolution of sustainability indicators in different countries within different geographical areas. We thus assessed the spatio-temporal structure of countries worldwide according to the SSI using X-STATIS and X-STATICO in combination with a common tool in statistics, the spider graph. From a methodological point of view, X-STATIS and X-STATICO offer a rigorous theoretical framework for the simultaneous analysis of a three-dimensional set of data. Applied in the field of sustainability, this method constitutes a relevant way of analysing the spatio-temporal organization of countries. Our findings show that by applying these three-way methods, a differentiation can be observed in the sustainability indicators in the period analyzed (2006-2012) towards a greater emphasis on economic indicators, especially public debt, genuine savings and employment.