Sustainable development is increasingly understood as the inseparable integration of economic, social and environmental progress. Yet the social dimension—how deprivation is measured, how inclusive growth is financed, and how gains are sustained over time—remains the most difficult to operationalise, particularly across emerging and developing regions. This Special Issue invites rigorous, policy-relevant scholarship that strengthens the bridge between the measurement of social well-being and the economic and financial mechanisms required to advance it.

Building on the journal’s commitment to the interconnected dimensions of sustainable development and the 2030 Agenda, the issue focuses on multidimensional approaches to poverty and human development, on the design and evaluation of investment and financing instruments aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, and on the institutions and governance arrangements that allow social progress to endure. Contributions that connect robust quantitative evidence with actionable policy implications are especially welcome.

Indicative topics include, but are not limited to: multidimensional poverty measurement and regional poverty indices; inclusive and sustainable economic growth; financing, investment appraisal and engineering economics for the SDGs; social sustainability, inequality and human development; the economics of the energy transition and climate finance; and governance, institutions and data infrastructure for sustainable social development.

We welcome a diversity of contributions—original empirical research, conceptual and methodological articles, systematic reviews, meta-analyses and critical commentaries—from economics, finance, public policy and related disciplines. Comparative and regionally grounded studies, including evidence from Latin America and other emerging economies, are particularly encouraged.

· Multidimensional Poverty

· Poverty Measurement

· Sustainable Development

· Inclusive Growth

· Development Finance

· Social Sustainability

· Emerging Economies